Reaching the yard, he found the animal; found also that the dragoons must have preceded him, since now all their horses were gone excepting one, which, by its caparisons and trappings, by the great gold sun upon the bridle, the throat-plume and saddle-flaps, as well as by its fleecy bear-skin saddle-cloth, was plainly an officer's.
"A fine beast," he mused as, ere he removed his own horse, he held a bucket of water to its mouth, "a fine beast. Too good to be employed in carrying its rider to such work as he and his men have been about to-day."
As he thought thus he heard the heavy ring of spurred boots upon the rough flags of the yard, also the clang of a metal scabbard-tip on them, and, glancing round, saw coming toward him a young dragoon officer, his face flushed, perhaps with the heat, perhaps with the business that he and his troops had been recently employed upon.
"Peste!" the man exclaimed as he came up to his own steed and began unfastening the bridle from the staple to which it was attached. "Peste! Hot work, monsieur, this morning, what with the glaring sun and the flames from the mill. N'est-ce pas, monsieur? Yet, yet I wish those heretics had not been of the feeble. It is no soldier's work slaughtering babes and women and vieillards. My God!" he broke off, exclaiming, a moment later, "So it is you, villain!"
"What!" exclaimed Martin, astonished at this sudden change of speech and regarding him as though he were a madman. "What! Villain! To whom does monsieur apply that word?" and the look upon his face should have warned the young man to be careful of his words.
"To whom," the other sneered, however, "to whom? To whom should I apply it but one? Who else is there in the stable-yard but you to whom it would apply? And if there were fifty more, I should still address it to you. Also the word murderer."
"To me! Are you mad that you assault a stranger thus with such opprobrium? Answer, or, being sane, draw the weapon by your side."
"Which is that which I intend to do. Yet I know not whether you are fit to cross blades with. You! You!"
"You will know it shortly," Martin said quietly, as now he drew his own sword and stood before him, "unless, that is, you have some very tangible explanation of your words to offer."
"Explanation! Explanation! Oh, avec ça! you shall have an explanation. Are you not the fellow who sat on the bridge when De Peyre's dragoons rode into Montvert after the murder of the Abbé du Chaila? Are you not the man who led the attack on the Intendant's daughter, dragging her from her carriage, carried her off to the mountains, to your accursed attroupés; doubtless assisted in her murder? Answer that, maraud, and tell no lies."