“Your wife?” I asked, quietly.
“Yes, ami.”
He dropped my numbed fingers and rubbed his eyes with the back of his big hand. 338
“Then Jacqueline is not your little daughter?” I asked, gravely.
“Hers—not mine. That has been the most terrible of all for me—since she died—died so young, too, m’sieu—and all alone—in Paris. If he had not done that—if he had been kind to her. And she was only a child, ami, yet he left her.”
All the ferocity in his eyes was gone; he raised a vacant, grief-lined visage to meet mine, and stood stupidly, heavy hands hanging.
Then, shoulders sloping, he shambled off into the thicket, trailing his battered rifle.
When he was very far away I motioned to Speed.
“I think,” said I, “that we had better try to do something at the semaphore if we are going to stop that train in time.”