Matthias moodily entered the stable, produced a pick, and walked into his potato-croft. Berthier stared after him, uncertain whether by this action he designed in his boorish manner to express his determination to break off the transaction. Matthias began to dig up a row of potatoes, and Berthier saw him take up the roots, and count the tubers on each, and measure them with his eye. Presently he returned with a lap-full; these he measured in a bushel, and made a rough calculation of the number he should gather from his little croft. The gloom on his face became deeper. Then he went into the cow-house and remained there a few minutes. After that he entered the little orchard of some dozen trees, and estimated the yield of apples; then he returned to the house, opened the clothes-chest, and threw all the articles of wearing apparel on the table and bench, and made a mental valuation of them. There were some silver ornaments,--round perforated buttons and a brooch that Gabrielle wore on great fêtes; an heirloom. The peasant was unable to estimate their value, so he brought them out to the Intendant, and said, sulkily: ‘What are these worth?’ Berthier weighed them in his hand, laughed, and said: ‘The value of the silver is trifling--five or eight francs, at the outside.’ The wretched father carried them back into the house. Presently he came out in a vacillating, uneasy way--his mind hardly made up. ‘You promise me that it is only madame who will have anything to do with my Gabrielle?’ he said. ‘I promise you that! of course I will. She will be with madame night and day; will scarcely be out of her sight. Will that content you?’ André still mused, and refrained from giving a decided answer. Just then he caught sight of the money-lender, Jacob Maître, a short-built, red-whiskered and bearded man, with thick overhanging red brows, standing on the dyke, contemplating the havoc made in André’s field by the flood. That sight determined him. He bent, gathered up six of the heaps of silver between his palms, rushed with it into his cottage, and bolted the door. CHAPTER VII. After Berthier had seen Gabrielle safely locked up in one of the towers that formed the extremities of his house, at Foulon’s advice he had visited the Isle des Hirondelles. Madame Berthier had returned from the church, and was in her own chamber, at the farther end of the house.