“He may be,” was the answer; “but that will make no difference, since for one adherent that we have the Peruccas have twenty. There are a thousand men between Cap Corse and Balagna who, if I went outside this door and was recognized, would shoot me like a rat.”
“But why?”
“Because they are of Perucca's clan, my friend,” replied the count, with a shrug of the shoulder.
“But still I ask why?” persisted Lory.
And the count spread out his thin white hands with a gesture of patient indifference.
“Well, of course I shot Andrei Perucca—the brother—thirty years ago. We all know that. That is ancient history.”
Lory looked at the little white-haired, placid man, and said no word. It was perhaps the wisest thing to do. When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
“But he has had his revenge—that Mattei Perucca,” said the count at length, in a tone of careless reminiscence—“by living in that house all these years, and, so they tell me, by making a small fortune out of the vines. The house is not his, the land is not his. They are mine. Only he and I knew it, and to prove it I should have to come to life. Besides, what is land in this country, unless you till it with a spade in one hand and a gun in the other?”
Lory de Vasselot leant forward in his chair.
“But now is the time to act,” he said. “I can act if you will not. I can make use of the law.” “The law,” answered his father, calmly. “Do you think that you could get a jury in Bastia to give you a verdict? Do you think you could find a witness who would dare to appear in your favour? No, my friend. There is no law in this country, except that;” and he pointed to a gun in the corner of the room, an old-fashioned muzzle-loader, with which he had had the law of Andrei Perucca thirty years before.