Miette, after a woman's fashion, was partial to lugubrious subjects.

At each new discovery she launched into endless suppositions.
If the bone were small, she spoke of some beautiful girl a prey to consumption, or carried off by fever on the eve of her marriage; if the bone were large, she pictured some big old man, a soldier or a judge, some one who had inspired others with terror.

For a long time the tombstone particularly engaged their attention.

One fine moonlight night Miette distinguished some half-obliterated letters on one side of it, and thereupon she made Silvere scrape the moss away with his knife.

Then they read the mutilated inscription: "Here lieth.