He stopped, he scarcely knew how to phrase the thoughts he was thinking.
The other moved with a certain impatience.
“How often must I tell you to forget that I was ever anything except a soldier of France?—forget as I have forgotten it!”
The audacious, irrepressible “Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort,” whom nothing could daunt and nothing could awe, looked penitent and ashamed as a chidden spaniel.
“I know, sir. I have tried, many a year; but I thought, perhaps, as how his lordship's death—”
“No life and no death can make any difference to me, except the death that some day an Arbico's lunge will give me; and that is a long time coming.”
“Ah, for God's sake, Mr. Cecil, don't talk like this!”
The Chasseur gave a short, sharp shiver, and started at this name, as if a bullet had struck him.
“Never say that again!”
Rake, Algerian-christened “Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort,” stammered a contrite apology.