"So Solange was forbidden to see her friend. Naturally, the girl never failed at a tryst. Living in the same commune, with the forest at hand, they never lost an opportunity of meeting there. When the father and mother Tournier realized that scoldings and blows were of no avail, they determined upon a radical step. Solange was accordingly sent out to work at Ursay, on the model farm of M. Roger Duflos, our deputy. "Perhaps you think our two lovers ceased to see each other. Not in the least. They now met at night; they slept no more. After nightfall they both left the farms where they were employed and started toward each other; and then they remained together until nearly dawn in the maternal forest, the accomplice of their young love. "This was in 1879. In this manner the summer and autumn went by. Then came the winter, and a fierce winter it was. The Cher carried ice-drifts, and finally froze from bank to bank. The Tronsays forests, covered with snow, were bent like the weak supports of an overladen roof. The roads were almost impassable. The forest, deserted by man, was gradually being reconquered by beasts. It was soon invaded by wolves, which had neither been seen nor heard of since the Terrible year. "Yes, sir, wolves! They haunted the isolated farms around Lurcy-Lévy and Ursay. They even ventured into the streets of St. Bonnet le Désert,--a little village in the heart of the forest on the banks of a pond. It reached such a point that men were organized into bands to beat the woods. A reward of fifty francs was offered for the head of a wolf. "Neither winter nor wolves, however, daunted Solange and Laurent, or interfered with their nocturnal meetings. They continued their expeditions in the face of a thousand dangers. This was the dead season in the fields, the time when the land lies fallow. Every night Laurent left Lurcy-Lévy, a gun over his shoulder, and penetrated with a lively step into the black and white forest. Solange, on the other hand, started from Ursay at about nine o'clock, and they met near a glade some three kilometres from here, traversed by a road, and known as the Découverte. "It so happened that one night, which, by the way, was Christmas Eve, Laurent Grillet, as he reached the rendezvous, slipped on the hardened snow and fell, breaking his right leg and spraining his right wrist. Solange tried to raise him, but could only drag him to a great elm, against which she propped him, after wrapping him in her own cloak. "'Wait for me here, my poor Laurent,' said she; 'I will run to Ursay for the doctor, and get him to come for you in his carryall.' "She started off, but had not reached the first turn in the road when she heard a report and the cry, 'Help!' "She ran back and found her friend in an agony of pain and fear, his trembling hand on the gun which lay beside him. She said, 'What is it, Laurent? Was it you who fired?'