THE MAN IN SAND-SHOES

That night, about three o’clock, the innkeeper widow Delouche, who lived in the middle of the village, got up to light her fire. Her brother-in-law Dumas, who lived with her, had to start at four, and the sad-looking woman, whose right hand bore the shrivelled scar of an old burn, was hurrying to make coffee in the dark kitchen. It was cold. She threw an old shawl over her night camisole, then holding a lighted candle in one hand and with her scarred hand raising her apron to shelter the flame, she crossed the yard littered with empty bottles and packing-cases, and opened the door of the shed, which was also used as a chicken-run, to get her kindling.... But she had hardly pushed the door ajar, when some one sprang from the darkness, extinguished the candle with a blow of his cap, and with the same blow knocked over the good woman, then took to his heels while the terrified cocks and hens set up an infernal row.

The man was carrying away in a sack--as widow Delouche realised a moment later when she regained her balance--a dozen of her finest chickens.

At the cries of his sister-in-law, Dumas ran up. He discovered that the scamp, to get in, must have opened the gate of the small yard with a skeleton key, and that he had escaped by the same way, without shutting it again. At once, being accustomed to poachers and thieves, Dumas lighted his cart-lamp and carrying it in one hand with his loaded gun in the other, proceeded to follow the track of the thief, a very faint trail--the fellow most likely wore sand-shoes--which led to the Station Road, then disappeared at the gate of a meadow. Obliged to leave his search at this, he looked up, stopped ... and heard in the distance, on the same road, the noise of a cart going at full gallop, evidently running off....

For his part, Jasmin Delouche, the widow’s son, had also got up, and hastening to throw his hooded cloak on his shoulders, had gone out in his slippers to inspect the village. Everything was asleep, everywhere reigned darkness and the deep silence which precede the first glimmer of dawn. Reaching the Cross-Roads he heard in the distance--as his uncle had--only the noise of a cart with the horse apparently at full gallop. The wily and cowardly boy then said to himself, as he later repeated it to us with that unbearable thick pronunciation peculiar to Montluçon: ‘They’ve gone towards the station, but who knows if I mayn’t catch others, red-handed, the other side of the village!’

And he walked back towards the church in the silence of the night.

On the square, a light shone in the gipsies’ caravan. Somebody must be ill. He was going to draw near and ask what had happened when a silent shadow, a shadow walking in sand-shoes, emerged from the Nookery and heeding nothing else rushed at full speed towards the steps of the van.

Jasmin, who had recognised the gait of Booby, came forth suddenly into the patch of light and asked in a low voice: ‘Well! What’s the matter?’

Haggard, dishevelled, toothless, the fellow stopped, looked at Delouche with a wretched grin caused by fear and lack of breath and replied in a jerky voice: ‘It is my friend who’s ill.... He had a fight last night and his wound’s reopened.... I’ve just been to fetch the nurse.’

As a matter of fact, about the middle of the village, as Jasmin Delouche, sorely puzzled, was going home to bed, he met a Sister of Mercy who was hurrying.

* * * * *

In the morning several inhabitants of Sainte-Agathe appeared on their doorsteps with heavy eyes tired by a sleepless night. There was a general cry of indignation which spread through the village like a trail of gunpowder.

At Giraudat’s, a cart had stopped about 2 A.M. and had been loaded with parcels which fell in softly. There were only two women in the house and they had not dared to move. At daybreak they had realised, on opening the yard gate, that the parcels in question were rabbits and poultry. Millie, during the first recreation, found several burnt matches outside the wash-house door. We came to the conclusion that the thieves did not know our house and had not been able to break in.... At Perreux’s, at Boujardon’s, and at Clément’s it was at first supposed that pigs even had been stolen, but these were found during the morning busily uprooting greens in several gardens. The whole herd had seized the chance of the opened gate to take a little nocturnal outing.... Nearly everywhere poultry had been carried away, but that was all. Madame Pignot, the baker-woman, who did not rear chickens, complained loudly during all that day, that her washing-board and a pound of rinsing blue had been stolen from her, but the deed was never proved and never entered in the records of the case....

This agitation, these fears, this gossip lasted the whole morning. In class, Jasmin related his night adventure.

‘Ah! they’re clever beggars,’ he said. ‘But if Uncle had met one of them, he says he’d ’ave shot him like a rabbit!’

And he added, looking at us: ‘What luck it is he didn’t meet Booby; he’d sure enough have fired.’ They all be one gang, he says, and Dessaigne said the same.

Yet no one thought about disturbing our new friends. It was only the next day in the evening that Jasmin remarked to his uncle that Booby and their thief both wore sand-shoes. Then they agreed that this fact was worth mentioning to the police. So they decided, in great secrecy, to go, when they had a moment, to the chief town of the district and inform the head constable.

During the following days the young bohemian, still ill with his wound, did not appear. Every evening we went prowling on the church square merely to watch his lamp behind the caravan’s red curtain. Feverish with anxiety we stood there, not daring to draw near this humble abode which seemed to us the magic portal of the Land to which we had lost the way.