The pent-up rage within him leaped to his throat:
"It does not pass like that!" he roared. With his clenched fist he struck her squarely across the mouth. He saw her sink limp to the ground, bleeding, her head buried between her knees. Then he picked up the child and started with it across the plank that spanned the fork of the stream. A moment later, still dizzy from the blow, she saw him dimly, making rapidly across the marsh toward a bend in the stream. Then the love of a mother welled up within her and she got to her feet and followed him.
"Stay where thou art!" he shouted back threateningly.
The child in his arms was screaming. She saw his hand cover its throat—the next moment she had reached him and her two hands were about his own in a grip that sent him choking to his knees. The child rolled from his arms still screaming, and the woman who was strangling Garron into obedience now sank her knee in his back until she felt him give up.
"Assez!" he grunted out when he could breathe.
"Eh ben! I am like that when I don't like a thing!" she cried, savagely repeating her old words. He looked up and saw a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "Ah, mais oui alors!" she shouted defiantly. "Since it is thine thou wilt keep it!"
Garron did not reply. She knew the fight was out of him and picked up the still screaming baby, which she hugged to her breast, crooning over it while Garron got lamely to his feet. Without another word she started back to the hut, Garron following his mate and his son in silence.
Years passed and the boy grew up on the marsh, tolerated by Garron and idolized and spoiled by Julie—years that transformed the black-eyed baby into a wiry, reckless young rascal of sixteen with all the vagabond nature of his father—straight and slim, with the clear-cut features of a gypsy. A year later the brother of Madame Villette, a well-known figure on the Paris Bourse, appeared and after a satisfactory arrangement with Garron, took the boy with him to Paris to be educated.