There was also a Sheriff--not the same as he who had accosted La Châine overnight--but another one, older than the former, and seeming also much grief-stricken.
"If," said this man, addressing Marion, "the young woman of whom you speak is indeed ill, let her rest; later, she may be able to be of assistance. God forbid we should do aught to add to the sickness here. She is not attacked with the pestilence?" he asked.
"Nay," said Marion. "Nay. But she is young and delicate. She is a lady. Think, monsieur, of what she must have gone through in the past few months. We others are mostly rough creatures, especially those who have survived, since the loose women, the dissolute ones who set out with us have--well--been left behind. But--but----"
"What was her crime? That of your friend? For what was she condemned?"
"She was an innocent woman!" cried Marion; and as she spoke her lustrous eyes blazed into the man's before her. "God crush for ever the scoundrel who bore false witness against her."
"There are other women in the house," the Sheriff said, almost unheeding Marion's tempestuous outburst. "They at least can work, can they not?"
"Oh! as for that," Marion answered, "I imagine so. I will go in and see. Yes," she exclaimed, glancing up at a window in the house above the room in which she and Laure had slept, she being now in the street and amidst the group, "it would seem so. Behold, they look forth."
It was true that they did so, since, when all eyes were directed upwards, the unkempt heads of the other surviving members of the gang--heads covered in some cases with black hair, in some with yellow, and, in one, with grey--were seen peering down into the street.
"Hola!" cried Marion, "come down all of you. Come down and assist at the good work. You have slept well, have you not?"
"Ay, we have slept. But now we are hungry. We want food. We cannot work on empty stomachs; if we do the pest will seize on us."