Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H THE ABC GIVES UP THE BOOT This is how it happened. I am here writing my deposition as witness, not merely the bare facts I gave to the court at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, but with the addition of certain details and observations which occurred to me at a later time. It was this additional data which served to strengthen and finally to confirm my suspicions. We had installed ourselves for the season in the narrow Valley of La Lombarde, a prolongation of the Valley of Averole that begins at Bessans and runs down between the vast heights of Le Charbonel and Albaron. The Valley is inhabited only during the summer months, when the shepherds bring their flocks there to pasture. The Couverts own two chalets, one of which was used by Benoit, who lived alone tending sheep and making cheese. Claude and I used the other, which is higher up and more comfortable than Benoit's. I had selected this because it was near the hiding-places and also because a secret instinct had taught me that the brothers did not care to be too near to each other. None the less, it was convenient to have Benoit not too far away,as he supplied us with fresh milk. Besides, Mad- dalena rode up on her mule with provisions several days a week, bringing with her my mail. In former years she brought with her on these excursions one of her sons, but now the boys were growing up: Etienne, the elder, was nearly seventeen and Jean-Marie was twelve, and they were needed on the farm. One day—it was the 12th of September a dozen years ago—we returned from hunting rather earlier than usual (I think it was between four and five), carrying a chamois we had killed on the edge of the Arnes Glacier near the Italian border. I made a present of him to Claude, who seemed very anxious to have him. "I've got time t... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.