CHAPTER XXIII
THE LAST ARROW—AND A PROMISE
The one bird-like eye of the old Michel regarded Ste. Marie with a glance of mingled cunning and humour. It might have been said to twinkle.
"To the east, monsieur?" inquired the old Michel.
"Precisely!" said Ste. Marie. "To the east, mon vieux." It was the morning of the fourth day after that talk with Captain Stewart beside the rose gardens.
The two bore to the eastward, down among the trees, and presently came to the spot where a certain trespasser had once leapt down from the top of the high wall and had been shot for his pains. The old Michel halted and leant upon the barrel of his carbine. With an air of complete detachment, an air vague and aloof as of one in a reverie, he gazed away over the tree-tops of the ragged park; but Ste. Marie went in under the row of lilac shrubs which stood close against the wall, and a passer-by might have thought the man looking for figs on thistles—for lilacs in late July. He had gone there with eagerness, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes; he emerged, after some moments, moving slowly, with downcast head.
"There are no lilac blooms now, monsieur," observed the old Michel, and his prisoner said in a low voice—
"No, mon vieux. No. There are none." He sighed and drew a long breath. So the two stood for some time silent, Ste. Marie a little pale, his eyes fixed upon the ground, his hands chafing together behind him: the gardener with his one bright eye upon his charge. But in the end Ste. Marie sighed again and began to move away, followed by the gardener. They went across the broad park, past the double row of larches, through that space where the chestnut trees stood in straight close rows, and so came to the west wall which skirted the road to Clamart. Ste. Marie felt in his pocket and withdrew the last of the four letters—the last there could be, for he had no more stamps. The others he had thrown over the wall, one each morning, beginning with the day after he had made the first attempt to bribe old Michel. As he had expected, twenty-four hours of avaricious reflection had proved too much for that gnome-like being.
One each day he had thrown over the wall, weighted with a pebble tucked loosely under the flap of the improvised envelope in such a manner that it would drop out when the letter struck the ground beyond. And each following day he had gone with high hopes to the appointed place under the cedar-tree to pick figs of thistles, lilac blooms in late July. But there had been nothing there.
"Turn your back, Michel!" said Ste. Marie. And the old man said from a little distance—