It was long before Tybalt spoke, but at last he said: If I could but tell it as you have told it to me, Pierre!" Pierre answered: "Tell it with your tongue, and this shall be nothing to it, for what am I? What English have I, a gipsy of the snows? But do not write it, mais non! Writing wanders from the matter. The eyes, and the tongue, and the time, that is the thing. But in a book—it will sound all cold and thin. It is for the north, for the camp-fire, for the big talk before a man rolls into his blanket, and is at peace. No, no writing, monsieur. Speak it everywhere with your tongue."
"And so I would, were my tongue as yours. Pierre, tell me more about the letters at Fort O'Glory. You know his name—what was it?"
"You said five hundred dollars for one of those letters. Is it not?"
"Yes." Tybalt had a new hope.
"T'sh! What do I want of five hundred dollars! But, here, answer me a question: Was the lady—his wife, she that was left in England—a good woman? Answer me out of your own sense, and from my story. If you say right you shall have a letter—one that I have by me."
Tybalt's heart leapt into his throat. After a little he said huskily:
"She was a good woman—he believed her that, and so shall I."
"You think he could not have been so great unless, eh? And that 'Charles
Rex,' what of him?"
"What good can it do to call him bad now?" Without a word, Pierre drew from a leather wallet a letter, and, by the light of the fast-setting sun, Tybalt read it, then read it again, and yet again.
"Poor soul! poor lady!" he said. "Was ever such another letter written to any man? And it came too late; this, with the king's recall, came too late!"
"So—so. He died out there where that wild duck flies—a Great Slave.
Years after, the Company's man brought word of all."