On reaching the edge of the cliff he seized the sack and thrust his hand into it. Out of it he drew the head and then the body of a child. At once he recognized Jodot’s little confederate, the boy whom the crook carried with him like a ferret and set hunting in cellars and through gratings and palings. The child was half asleep. Ralph, furious, suddenly solved the problem which had so puzzled him. He shook the child and said: “You little blighter! You followed us from the Rue de Courcelles! What? Jodot managed to hide you on the luggage rack of my car. And you traveled like that to Clermont-Ferrand, and sent him a post-card from there! Confess it! Or I’ll spank you!” The child did not quite understand what was happening to him; and his vicious, street-urchin’s, pale face filled with fear. He muttered: “Yes. Tonton made me.” “Tonton?” “Yes: Uncle Jodot.” “And where’s your uncle now?” “We went away last night, all three of us, and then came back.” “And then?” “Then they went down below, when the water had gone, and hunted everywhere and gathered things.” “Before me?” cried Ralph. “Yes: before you and the young lady. When you came out of the grotto they hid themselves behind a wall down there, further off than the grotto. I saw everything from here, where Tonton told me to wait for him.” “And now where are they both?” “I don’t know. It was hot, and I went to sleep. I awoke for a little while, and they were fighting.” “Fighting?” said the astonished Ralph. “Yes, for something they’d found, something that shone like gold. I saw that they fell—Tonton gave William a jab with his knife—and then I don’t know what happened exactly—I went to sleep again perhaps. But it looked to me as if the wall fell and buried both of them.” “What—what? What are you t-t-telling me?” stammered the horrified Ralph. “Answer—where did this happen? At what time?” “When the bells began to ring—quite at the end. Look—there.” The child bent over the cliff and looked astounded. “Oh!” he said. “The water’s come back!” He thought for a moment then began to cry, and wailed: “Then—then—if the water has come back—they weren’t able to get away. So Tonton——” Ralph cut him short, saying: “Be quiet!” Aurelie stood before them with troubled face; she had heard it. Jodot and William, wounded, insensible, unable to stir or to call out, had been covered by the flood and smothered and drowned. The stones of the fallen wall lay upon their bodies. “It’s terrible,” she stammered. “What a punishment for those two men!” The sobs of the child grew louder. Ralph gave him some money and a visiting card. “Here: here’s a hundred francs. Go and take the train to Paris and go to this address. You’ll be taken care of.” The return journey was made in silence and at the entrance of the sanatorium Aurelie’s good-by was very grave. “Let us separate for some days,” she said. “I will write to you.” Ralph protested. “Separate? Those who love one another do not separate!”