"Wait, we are coming to it," was the reply. "Pitou had come to Paris, and let a couple of words drop to show that it was not my crops so much in danger as my child—not my fortune but my happiness. So I left the King to shift for himself in the city. Since he meant the right thing, as Dr. Gilbert assured me, all would go for the best, whether I was at hand or not, and I returned on my farm.
"I believed that Catherine had brain fever or something I would not understand, but was only in danger of death. The condition in which I found her made me uneasy, all the more as the doctor forbade me the room till she was cured. The poor father in despair, not allowed to go into the sickroom, could not help hanging round the door. Yes, I listened. Then I learnt that she was at death's point almost out of her senses with fever, mad because her lover—her gallant, not her sweetheart, see! had gone away. A year before, I had gone away, but she had smiled on my going instead of grieving. My going left her free to meet her gallant!
"Catherine returned to health but not to gladness! a month, two, three, six months passed without a single beam of joy kissing the face which my eyes never quitted. One morning I saw her smile and shuddered. Was not her lover coming back that she should smile? Indeed a shepherd who had seen him prowling about, a year before, told me that he had arrived that morning. I did not doubt that he would come over on my ground that evening or rather on the land where Catherine was mistress. I loaded up my gun at dark and laid in wait——"
"You did this, Billet?" queried Charny.
"Why not?" retorted the farmer. "I lay in wait right enough for the wild boar coming to make mush of my potatoes, the wolf to tear my lambs' throats, the fox to throttle my fowls, and am I not to lay in wait for the villain who comes to disgrace my daughter?"
"But your heart failed you at the test, Billet, I hope," said the count.
"No, not the heart, but the eye and the hand," said the other: "A track of blood showed me that I had not wholly missed, only you may understand that a defamed maid had not wavered between father and scoundrel—when I entered the house, Catherine had disappeared."
"And you have not seen her since?"
"No. Why should I see her? she knows right well that I should kill her on sight."
Charny shrank back in terror mingled with admiration for the massive character confronting him.