"I cannot tell what is good ploughing?" he gasped. "Yes." "I cannot buy a pair of oxen?" "Yes." "I cannot have myself drawn about in a cart, or punt a boat? Answer, if you please." "Yes, my son." "Then what further do I need for the management of a farm? Labourers I can hire. A wife?" His father dared not say Yes. "I will bring one!" Mathurin had reached the corner of the table and was now leaning upon it, the upper part of his body swaying and struggling to maintain its equilibrium. "One who has more heart than all of you put together! She knows that I shall get well. She has almost given me her promise to marry me as I am ... when I shall have persuaded her." "Do not trust to what the girls tell you, my poor lad. It is only fathers and mothers who love and cherish those afflicted as you are.... You are ill this evening. See, your limbs are failing you. Come to bed, I will help you." The cripple did not try to answer. His eyes closed, his head sank on to his shoulder; the crutches slipped from under the arms that stretched out as those of a drowning man seeking help. He would have fallen to the ground had not the farmer rushed forward to support him. The giddiness did not last long. It was a sharp but short attack. Hardly had his father got him into a recumbent position on the chest at the foot his bed than Mathurin opened his eyes. He looked at his father, raised himself unaided, and putting hand to the back of his neck, said: "You see, it is nothing. The pain you caused did it.... I am not ill." All trace of anger had disappeared, but the misery in his face was the same, mingled with that kind of horror men experience when they have been at the very verge of death. "Would you like me to help you?" asked his father. With a shrug of the shoulders the cripple began to undress himself, and taking off his coat, folded it, and laid it on the chest. "No. I will get to bed by myself. I want to be left in peace." His voice trembled as much as his hands. "You had better go to meet Rousille. She will have her news to tell you--and, moreover, it is pitch dark, the roads are not too safe----" Toussaint Lumineau, who knew the danger of opposing his son in such an attack, made no demur. "I will go as far as the road, Mathurin, and will tell the man to be at hand in the bakery in case you need him." He did not go even as far as the road. He was too uneasy. He went some hundred yards along the wall of La Fromentière in the rain, turned back, and then not wishing to go in too soon as to allow Mathurin time to calm down, he went into the stables to look to the animals, and see that none had broken loose. But, all unsuspected, Mathurin had slipped out after him. The farmer had not gone ten paces beyond the gate ere the cripple had come out into the courtyard, cautiously shut the outer door, and was making his way towards the threshing-floor in order to reach the meadow by the short cut.