"Quick!" he exclaimed, "quick! The light! He lives still, but his minutes are numbered. He is dying, dying fast. Where is his wound?"
"In the lower part of his body, through him. A sword thrust. I have tried to stanch it, but it flows always. I marvel he has lived so long."
She brought the oil lamp forward as she spoke and held it near the man, and St. Georges, kneeling down, looked at him. Then with a bound he sprang up again, exclaiming: "He here! Heaven and earth! what brings him here? How comes he in this mystery? What—what does it mean, what portend?"
"You know him?"
"Yes, I know him."
The man stretched upon the pallet was Pierre, the Bishop of Lodève's man-servant!
"Speak!" said St. Georges to him a moment later, smothering for the time his wonder and astonishment. "Speak if you can. One word from you may alter my whole life, my child's life. Speak ere you die."
It seemed, however, that he would never speak again. But, also, it seemed as if all consciousness was not gone from him yet—as if he recognised the man kneeling once more at his side, while again the woman held the lamp above them. As far as he was able with his failing strength, he endeavoured to shrink from St. Georges while as he did so his eyes, distended either with fear or horror, glared at him. But from his mouth there came no sound but the laboured breathing.
Again St. Georges besought him to speak; plied him with questions. Was the child taken from him Dorine; by whom had it been taken; how had he whom St. Georges had never seen until he slept at the bishop's, and whom he had left at Dijon, found his way here only to be murdered? And still no answer came, while once the dying man tried with his feeble hand to push St. Georges away, and still stared in ghastly horror at him.