The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

"Oh, I am sorry!" broke in Laurent impulsively. "And in honour you could have done nothing else. Do forget it! I was annoyed when I spoke."

"I think you had cause," said the elder man suddenly. "I had no right to read you a homily." He held out his hand. Then Laurent was back in the place which would shortly see the scales dip to one side or the other with his dearest friend's honour in the balance—the place which he hated and which, at the same time, he was only too thankful to set eyes on again. For he had had a horrible fright. But a precious grain of consolation was that among the more than doubled number of faces in the audience this morning one was missing. It would grin here no more and was almost certainly not grinning where it was now. The President began by saying that he had an announcement to make. Since M. le Général d'Andigné, now military governor of Maine-et-Loire was staying a couple of nights in the neighbourhood, he himself had so far presumed on their very old acquaintance as to ask him, with the approval of the Court, to give them the benefit of his ripe experience in this difficult and delicate case . . . that was, subject to M. de la Rocheterie's having no objection. M. de la Rocheterie here signifying that he had none—on the contrary—Sol de Grisolles intimated that he had sent M. d'Andigné a short summary of the case as far as it had gone yesterday, so that if he came, he would be au courant. Meanwhile, they had better proceed from the point at which they left off yesterday.

So the hapless de Fresne took his stand once more at the witness-table. Laurent tried not to listen. "Fouquier-Tinville" and the stout officer between them seemed determined to probe into every minute of the interval before de Fresne's return to the wood; hence Aymar also was on his feet most of the time. Laurent began to foresee that every detail of the shooting, too, would have to be gone over again, perhaps more fully. And all to what purpose? There was nothing to discover.

Oh, what would happen if they could not see their way to clearing Aymar? It began to be torture to him to look at the figure in front of him, especially when the bronze head turned a little, and he caught the outline of the sunken cheek.

"I can't stand much more of this!" he whispered at last to M. Perrelet.

"They will not go on at it forever," the optimist whispered back, and he laid his hand over the young man's and gave it a squeeze.

"But there's nothing else to go on to!" replied Laurent miserably.

Why could they not believe Aymar's word when he said that he had all but arranged the plan with Saint-Etienne? How was it possible to look at him and think him capable of infamy? Were they all blind? And why did M. d'Andigné delay? Perhaps he was not coming, after all? He was a great man, just about to be made a peer of France, and very busy at the moment settling the King's peace in Brittany But, if he did come, surely he, the Vendean general of so much experience, he, the phenomenally cool-headed and resourceful, the hero of the incredible escapes from the Fort de Joux and the citadel of Besançon, the man of untarnished integrity and honour, he would recognize that Aymar was telling the truth!

Or, suppose that he did not!

The accursed stout officer seemed now to be criticizing Aymar's intentions and dispositions during those three days in the wood, and as it went on Laurent wondered at Aymar's patience under it. The inquisitor had just ascertained that the nearest Bonapartist troops were no more than eight miles away, at Arbelles.