All the way up the hill his soul seethed within him. He would sell his life dear, if the worst came to the worst; they should fight for it now before ever they took him. He had stopped at a shop at Zell to buy a jäger’s knife, in place of the one he had left behind him at Monte Carlo, in the card-sharper’s body. He stuck it ostentatiously in the leather belt he had bought at Botzen to complete his costume; as he went on his way, he fingered it ever and anon with affectionate familiarity. Old moods came back to him; with his feather in his hat and his blade by his side, he felt himself once more a true Tyrolese Robbler. The thin veneer of Regent Street had dropped off as if by magic; when they wanted to arrest him, they should fight for it first; who would take him, must follow him like a fleet-footed chamois up the rocks behind St Valentin. And whoever came first should receive that good knife, plump, so, in his bosom, or plunge his own, if he could, into Franz’s. He would die like a man with his dagger in his hand. No rope or axe should ever finish the life of a free mountain jäger!
Thus thinking to himself, at last he reached the inn. On the threshold, Cousin Fridolin met him, distinctly penitent. “Andreas knows you’re here, friend Franz,” he said, with a reluctant air. “I didn’t quite tell him, but he guessed it, and wormed it out of me. He’s gone for a walk just now with Linnet—she’s grown such a fine lady. But there, I forgot; you’ve seen her in London.”
“Yes; I’ve seen her in London,” Franz answered, half-dreamily, in a musing undertone. His voice was as the voice of a condemned criminal. He knew he was doomed. He knew he must die. It might be to-day, or it might be to-morrow; but, sooner or later, he felt sure, the police would be after him.
He stalked moodily into the inn, and dropped, tired, into a chair in the parlour bar, with his legs extended straight in front of him in a despondent attitude. There he sat and reflected. Cousin Fridolin’s voice ran on, but Franz never heeded it. How little it meant to him now, Cousin Fridolin’s chatter about Linnet and Andreas! What did he care whether they were rich enough to buy up the whole parish, as Fridolin asserted, and have money left over? In a few short weeks, nothing on earth would make any difference. He gazed at his feet, and knit his brows, and breathed hard. Cousin Fridolin by his side ran on unchecked. Franz answered him nothing.
By-and-by the latch lifted—and Andreas Hausberger entered, followed close by Linnet.
Andreas gazed at his man angrily. Then he turned round to his wife. “Go to your room, Linnet,” he said, in his stern tone of command. “I must speak with this fellow.”
Linnet, cowed and trembling, slank off without a word. Franz could see she was pale, and had suffered greatly. Her cheeks had fallen in, her colour had flown, her lips were bloodless, her eye had lost its lustre. Andreas spoke to her in an ugly, domineering voice. Franz glared at him in his wrath. Surely, surely it was high time old scores were wiped out, and this question at least of Linnet’s happiness settled.
He must die himself soon; of that he felt quite sure; ’tis a chance which a Robbler has long been accustomed to keep vividly before him. But it would be something at least to feel he didn’t lose his own life in vain; that he was avenging himself on Andreas, and freeing Linnet. If guillotined he must be, it was better he should be guillotined for killing Andreas Hausberger on a woman’s behalf, than for stabbing a base card-sharper in a drunken brawl at Monte Carlo.
In such temper, at last, did Franz Lindner stand up and confront with mortal hate his old unforgiven enemy. Andreas turned to him with a little sneer. He spoke in English, lest Cousin Fridolin, bustling about behind the bar at his business, should overhear him and know what they were saying. “Well, what are you doing here?” he asked, with a contemptuous curl of those cynical lips. “Deverill sent you, I suppose. You’ve come all this way to spy upon me and my wife as his flunkey.”
Franz took a step forward, and glared at him fiercely from under his eyebrows. “I have not, liar,” he answered, his fingers twitching. “I didn’t know you were here, and I am no man’s flunkey.”