“It has a name, I suppose?”
“Certainly, but—”
“Is it sufficiently important, think you, to make us run the risk of being benighted on such roads as these?”
“Why, it is quite early in the day.”
“But we have more than two leagues to go. Why will you not speak? there can not be any great mystery.”
“Well, perhaps not a mystery exactly, but just one of those subjects on which we are usually reserved with others.”
“So! so!” rejoined D’Effernay, with a little sneer. “Some love affair; some girl or another who pursues him, that he wants to get rid of.”
“Nothing of the kind, I can assure you,” replied the captain, drily. “It could scarcely be more innocent. He wishes, in fact, to visit his friend’s grave.”
The listener’s expression was one of scorn and anger. “It is worth the trouble, certainly,” he exclaimed, with a mocking laugh. “A charming sentimental pilgrimage, truly; and pray who is this beloved friend, over whose resting-place he must shed a tear, and plant a forget-me-not? He told me he had never been in the neighborhood before.”
“No more he had; neither did he know where poor Hallberg was buried until I told him.”