‘I did not ask who,’ he replied drily. ‘I asked, what. You had no grudge against me?’
‘No.’
‘No knowledge of me?’
‘No.’
‘Then what on earth induced you to do it? Heavens! man,’ he continued bluntly, and speaking with greater freedom than he had before used, ‘Nature never intended you for a tipstaff. What was it then?’
I rose. It was very late, and the room was empty, the fire low.
‘I will tell you—to-morrow,’ I said. ‘I shall have something to say to you then, of which that will be part.’
He looked at me in great astonishment, and with a little suspicion. But I called for a light, and by going at once to bed, cut short his questions. In the morning we did not meet until it was time to start.
Those who know the south road to Agen, and how the vineyards rise in terraces north of the town, one level of red earth above another, green in summer, but in late autumn bare and stony, may remember a particular place where the road, two leagues from the town, runs up a steep hill. At the top of the hill four roads meet; and there, plain to be seen against the sky, is a finger-post indicating which way leads to Bordeaux, and which to old tiled Montauban, and which to Perigueux.
This hill had impressed me greatly on my journey south; perhaps because I had enjoyed from it my first extended view of the Garonne Valley, and had there felt myself on the verge of the south country where my mission lay. It had taken root in my memory, so that I had come to look upon its bare rounded head, with the guide-post and the four roads, as the first outpost of Paris, as the first sign of return to the old life.