Meredic advanced on tiptoe, as if he apprehended some danger, and he
glanced toward the spot uneasily.

What was this? No doubt she was asleep. Then he reflected that a person
does not go to sleep naked at half-past seven in the morning under the
cool trees. So, then, she must be dead, and he must be face to face with
a crime. At this thought a cold shiver ran through his frame, although he
was an old soldier. And then a murder was such a rare thing in the
country, and, above all, the murder of a child, that he could not believe
his eyes. But she had no wound-nothing save a spot of blood on her leg.
How, then, had she been killed?

He stopped close to her and gazed at her, while he leaned on his stick.
Certainly he must know her, for he knew all the inhabitants of the
district; but, not being able to get a look at her face, he could not
guess her name. He stooped forward in order to take off the handkerchief
which covered her face, then paused, with outstretched hand, restrained
by an idea that occurred to him.

Had he the right to disarrange anything in the condition of the corpse
before the official investigation? He pictured justice to himself as a
kind of general whom nothing escapes and who attaches as much importance
to a lost button as to the stab of a knife in the stomach. Perhaps under
this handkerchief evidence could be found to sustain a charge of murder;
in fact, if such proof were there it might lose its value if touched by
an awkward hand.

Then he raised himself with the intention of hastening toward the mayor's
residence, but again another thought held him back. If the little girl
were still alive, by any chance, he could not leave her lying there in