Grassette's breast heaved. "He put me out of my work, the man I kill. He pass the word against me, he hunt me out of the mountains, he call— tete de diable! he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my head, and I kill him."
The Governor made a protesting gesture. "I understand. I am glad his mother was dead. But do you not think how sudden it was? Now here, in the thick of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the darkin purgatory."
The brave old man had accomplished what everyone else, priest, lawyer, Sheriff and watcher, had failed to do: he had shaken Grassette out of his blank isolation and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of recognisable humanity.
"It is done—well, I pay for it," responded Grassette, setting his jaw.
"It is two deaths for me. Waiting and remembering, and then with the
Sheriff there the other—so quick, and all."
The Governor looked at him for some moments without speaking. The
Sheriff intervened again officiously.
"His Honour has come to say something important to you," he remarked oracularly.
"Hold you—does he need a Sheriff to tell him when to spik?" was Grassette's surly comment. Then he turned to the Governor. "Let us speak in French," he said in patois. "This rope-twister will not understan'. He is no good—I spit at him."
The Governor nodded, and, despite the Sheriff's protest, they spoke in French, Grassette with his eyes intently fixed on the other, eagerly listening.
"I have come," said the Governor, "to say to you, Grassette, that you have still a chance of life."
He paused, and Grassette's face took on a look of bewilderment and vague anxiety. A chance of life—what did it mean?