“I see,” said Lory. “Is that land ours?”
The count gave an odd little laugh.
“You can see nothing from this window that is not ours,” he answered. “As much as any other man's,” he added, after a pause. For the conviction still holds good in some Corsican minds that the mountains are common property.
“He is coming slowly, but not very cautiously,” said Lory. “Not like a man who thinks that he may be watched from here. He probably is taking no heed of these windows, for he thinks the place is deserted.”
“It is more probable,” replied the count, “that he is coming here to ascertain that fact. What the abbé has heard, another may hear, though he would not learn it from the abbé. If you want a secret kept, tell it to a priest, and of all priests, the Abbé Susini. Some one has heard that you are here in Corsica, and is creeping up to the castle to find out.”
“And I will go and find him out. Two can play at that game in the bushes,” said Lory, with a laugh.
“If you go, take a gun; one can never tell how a game may turn.”
“Yes; I will take a gun if you wish it.” And Lory went towards the door. “No,” he said, pausing in answer to a gesture made by his father, “not that one. It is of too old a make.”
And he went out of the room, leaving his father holding in his hand the gun with which he had shot Andrei Perucca thirty years before. He stood looking at the closed door with dim, reflective eyes. Then he looked at the gun, which he set slowly back in its corner.
“It seems,” he said to himself, “that I am of too old a make also.”