"In spite of your villainy, of your assaults on one so harmless as the child I carry, you are too vile for us to stain our weapons with your blood. Yet, what to do with you?"
"Throw him in there," said Boussac with sang froid. "That will keep him quiet for some time at least," and he pointed to an open grave which yawned very near where they stood, and into whose black mouth he had been peering for some time. He added also: "It will be his only chance of ever occupying one. Such as he end by hanging on roadside gibbets or rotting on the wheel they have been broken upon—the peaceful grave is not for them."
St. Georges turned his eyes to the spot indicated, exclaiming that it would do very well. It was no newly made grave, he saw, prepared for one who had recently departed, but, instead, an old one that had been opened, perhaps to receive some fresh body; for by the side of it there lay a slab that had, it was plain to see, been pushed aside from where it had previously rested, as though to permit of it being so opened.
"Ay," echoed Boussac, sardonically, "it will do very well. Add when he is in—as we will soon have him—the stone shall be pushed back to keep him safe. Then he may holla loud enough and long: no one will hear him."
His hollas began again at once, however, for at the terrifying prospect of being thus incarcerated in so awful a manner he flung himself once more on his knees, and bellowed out:
"Nay! Nay! In pity, I beseech you. You know not what you do—what terrors you condemn me to. A plague, a horrible one, a sweating sickness, passed over this province a year back—it took many, among others him who laid here. He was of Chantillon—a seigneur—and is now removed by his friends. Mercy! Mercy! Mercy! Condemn me not to this. Think, I beseech you. The grave is infected, impregnated with contagion. Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"
The fellow had thrust at his child's life—St. Georges remembered it even as he spoke!—yet, being a brave soldier himself, he could not condemn the ruffian to such horrors as these. Revenge he would have taken earlier, in the heat of the fight; would have killed the man with his own hand, even as he would have killed that other, the leader, had the chance arisen; but—this was beneath him. Therefore, he said:
"Bind him, Boussac, to this old yew. Bind him with his horse's reins and gag him. Then he must take his chance—the night grows late. We must away."
It was done almost as soon as ordered, the mousquetaire detaching the coarse reins of the man's horse—which was itself wounded and seemed incapable of action—and lashing him to the tree, while he took one of his stirrup leathers and bade him open his mouth to be gagged.
"To-morrow," he remarked to the unhappy wretch, "at matins you may be released. Meanwhile, heart up! you are not alone. You have your comrades for company." And he glanced down at the others lying still in death.