Celeste had finished her work. She put her son into his bed, arranged everything and waited for her father-in-law's return before lying down herself. She remained sitting on a chair, without moving her hands and with her eyes fixed on vacancy. As he did not come back, she murmured in a tone of impatience and annoyance: “This good-for-nothing old man will make us burn four sous' worth of candles.” Victor answered from under the bed clothes: “It's over an hour since he went out. We ought to see whether he fell asleep on the bench outside the door.” “I'll go and see,” she said. She rose up, took the light and went out, shading the light with her hand in order to see through the darkness. She saw nothing in front of the door, nothing on the bench, nothing on the dung heap, where the old man used sometimes to sit in hot weather. But, just as she was on the point of going in again, she chanced to raise her eyes toward the big apple tree, which sheltered the entrance to the farmyard, and suddenly she saw two feet--two feet at the height of her face belonging to a man who was hanging. She uttered terrible cries: “Victor! Victor! Victor!” He ran out in his shirt. She could not utter another word, and turning aside her head so as not to see, she pointed toward the tree with her outstretched arm. Not understanding what she meant, he took the candle in order to find out, and in the midst of the foliage lit up from below he saw old Amable hanging high up with a stable-halter round his neck. A ladder was leaning against the trunk of the apple tree. Victor ran to fetch a bill-hook, climbed up the tree and cut the halter. But the old man was already cold and his tongue protruded horribly with a frightful grimace. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 9, by Guy de Maupassant