"What is your wrong?" asked Laurent, the good-looking man. "What? Pardie! a woman, I suppose."
"Ay, a woman. Yet from your words, your guess at that, it should seem I am not the only one. Has he wronged other men--through the women they love?"
"Yes," Laurent answered. "Yes. That way and others."
"That way and others. So, 'tis not I alone who seek to punish him. Yet from me the punishment shall come. And 'tis better so, is it not? If you, or others, destroy him, you are here to be punished in return, you are yourselves of the pays, as you tell me. But I--I am a stranger, and, that done which I must do, I shall be gone; none can harm me. Moreover, he will fall at my hands in honourable duello. I shall not spare him as I spared him before."
"What!" came from all their lips, while the old man thrust his horn spectacles up on his forehead, and leaned across the table to stare at him. "What you had him once, and you spared him?"
"Yes, to finish the work better next time. And it was not his murder I sought" Whereupon he rapidly told them of the fight in the glade behind the church, and of how the peasants would have slain De Bois-Vallée, had he not interfered for his protection.
"'Twas folly," Laurent said, "I would have left him there for them to do the work. Thereby, monsieur would have had his desire gratified at no cost to himself."
"Nay," replied Andrew, "'twas because I had not done the work that I saved him, as now I prevent you from wreaking your vengeance on him. 'Tis I who must do it. Also, there is something else to be done. Listen!"
And now, because he saw and knew that he could bind these men to him either through their hatred of his enemy or because of their cupidity--or through both combined--he told them that the woman who had been wronged by this man was, he believed, somewhere in his power, and that, before all--before his revenge, before theirs--she must be found and saved. "Could they," he asked, "help him to save her?"
"Where is she?" answered Laurent, who seemed to take the lead now amongst his companions. "Let us know that, and, since you desire it, we may be of service. Alas! that we could have saved other women!"