“What!”
“Or they have found him.” And he told the old man all he had seen.
Brettison heard him to the end, and then faintly, but with conviction in his tones, he cried:
“Impossible! It cannot be true.”
Stratton looked at him wistfully, and shook his head.
“No,” he said, drawing a deep breath; “it cannot be true.”
Brettison, whose breathing was painful, lay back watching his companion with dilated eyes, and then turned to the woman who had drawn back from the bed and waited while her visitor talked to his friend.
“Madame,” he said in French, “Monsieur Cousin?”
She turned from the window where she had been watching.
“Out on the sands, monsieur,” she said in a startled way. “My good man says he is sitting with the new company who have come since yesterday to the house above.”