“He’d lost his reason and become a beast,” exclaimed de Sancerre, shortly. “But still he was from Europe, and has a claim upon us! I’ll get my paddle and scratch a hole to hide him from the wolves. And then I’ll say a prayer, and let him rest in peace.”
“He was a murderer!” gasped the girl, trembling with cold as the rising breeze forced her damp garments against her weary limbs.
“Ma foi, if that is so, our prayers are little worth. But come, chérie, there is less wind beneath this hill. I will return and throw some earth above those bones. If that white fragment of a wicked man had murdered all my kin, I would not leave him there uncovered for all time. He came from lands we know—and so I’ll treat him well! God, how I shall welcome the sight of de la Salle!”
With quick sympathy the girl put her hand upon de Sancerre’s arm as they turned their faces toward the glimmering flood.
“A woman is so useless, señor!” she exclaimed, “I can do naught but pray! But show me how I best may aid you now. I will try so hard!”
“You know not what you say, señora!” cried de Sancerre in Spanish, clasping the cold hand resting upon his arm as he led her toward the river. “Useless, quotha? Is a woman useless who teaches a wayward, rebellious, mocking heart the peace and glory of true love? I say to you, my Julia, that as Mother Mary is greater than the saints, so is a good woman better than the best of men.”
Then he added, smiling gayly as his happy eyes met her earnest gaze, and changing his tongue to French: “Not, chérie, that I am the best of men!”
“You are to me! Is not that enough?” she murmured, in a tone which made sweet music to his ears.
A half an hour had passed and de Sancerre had returned to the girl from his grewsome task as a grave-digger. The awful fate of the murderer to whom he had given hasty burial depressed his spirits, for the dead man had borne upon his emaciated frame the marks of his long year of misery, a year during which he had wandered through the wilds in a great circle, until hunger and exposure had made him a mad, crawling animal, too long despised by death itself.
“There were papers in this oil-skin bag,” remarked de Sancerre, throwing himself wearily upon the bank beside Doña Julia. “As he was secretary to your father, I thought it best to examine what he had kept so safe upon his breast. It was not wrong, ma chère?”