I
He stood bareheaded in the sun in long black riding-coat and muddied boots and breeches.
"What's that red riband in your button-hole?" asked the boy in a kind of awe.
"That! that's the Legion of Honour." He came a step forward. "Put your finger on it. That little bit of riband once lay upon the heart of Napoleon."
The boy began to tremble. That tiny square of red from which he could not take his eyes had once throbbed to the heart-beats of the Arch- enemy!
"D'you know him?"
"Little Boney!" laughing. "Yes, I know him."
The boy listened without hearing. It was all too dreamlike.
"D'you—d'you like him?"
The other chuckled.
"Like him?—I don't know that I exactly like him. You see he's not what you and I should call a gentleman. Still he serves me, so I serve him."
The boy's thumb was to his mouth, baby-like. All his anger had passed.
He was gazing at the other with brooding admiration.
This was the man who had kept three counties agog these two months past!
He was an enemy, but O! he was a hero.
Strangely young too, almost a boy; tall and slight as his own sword, the grey eyes big under dark brows, the face sun-golden and lean almost to gauntness.
"How did you do it?" murmured the boy.
The other's eyes clouded; the lids fell.
"I could not have done it but for her," he said.
Then for the first time the boy remembered the dead woman.