The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man’s rage was not a thing to see—and they both came from the little parish of St. Francis, and had passed many an hour together.
“Never mind, Grassette,” he said, gently. “Call me what you will. You’ve got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don’t want your life for the life you took.”
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—tête 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 dark—in purgatory.”
The brave old man had accomplished what every one 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 recognizable humanity.
“It is done—bien, 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 Honor 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.