"Come, sit up against the wall there and let me look at you."
Cringing, the old man drew himself over to the wall. Detricand, seating himself in a chair, held the candle up before him.
After a moment he said: "What I want to know is, how could a low-flying cormorant like you beget a gull of the cliffs like Maitre Ranulph?"
The old man did not answer, but sat blinking with malignant yet fearful eyes at Detricand, who continued: "What did you come back for? Why didn't you stay dead? Ranulph had a name as clean as a piece of paper from the mill, and he can't write it now without turning sick, because it's the same name as yours. You're the choice blackamoor of creation, aren't you? Now what have you got to say?"
"Let me go," whined the old man with the white beard. "Let me go, monsieur. Don't send me to prison."
Detricand stirred him with his foot, as one might a pile of dirt.
"Listen," said he. "In the Vier Marchi they're cutting off the ear of a man and nailing it to a post, because he ill-used a cow. What do you suppose they'd do to you, if I took you down there and told them it was through you Rullecour landed, and that you'd have seen them all murdered —eh, maitre cormorant?"
The old man crawled towards Detricand on his knees. "Let me go, let me go," he whined. "I was mad; I didn't know what I was doing; I've not been right in the head since I was in the Guiana prison."
At that moment it struck Detricand that the old man must have had some awful experience in prison, for now his eyes had the most painful terror, the most abject fear. He had never seen so craven a sight.
"What were you in prison for in Guiana, and what did they do to you there?" asked Detricand sternly. Again the old man shivered horribly, and tears streamed down his cheeks, as he whined piteously: "Oh no, no, no—for the mercy of Christ, no!" He threw up his hands as if to ward off a blow.