"I'm going to run," said the girl, who had often expressed her terror at Gaston's appearance.
Without another word she turned and fled, jumping over the tall ferns like a deer.
My uncle had now approached within a few feet's distance.
"Who is that with you?" he inquired, angrily.
"Mary Tanner, the daughter of the farmer below," I replied. "I have known her for some months. She is very nice—and—and pretty," I faltered.
"Bah! You shall have nothing to do with her. Never speak to her, d'ye mind me? And here's where you have been spending your time instead of being at your studies. Come back with me; I will fence with you."
It was one of my uncle's young days; and here, to put down something that neither I nor any person of real learning to whom I have related the facts, could account for: at varying periods my uncle, who was past sixty, seemed to be gifted with an agility, a nervous force and strength, that I have never seen equalled in a man of his slightness. This rejuvenation, during which he often sang rondeaux and tinkled an accompaniment on an old lyre, would last for some ten hours, perhaps, and would be followed by two or three days, or sometimes a week, of collapse, during which he appeared on the verge of dissolution, and either Gaston or myself had to be with him every minute, administering from time to time a few drops from an acrid-smelling vial.
But, as I have said, this was one of his youthful days.
I had been awakened in the morning early by a strange sound, and had found him jumping the colt backwards and forwards over a hurdle on the grass-plot before the house, Gaston standing by, a grim spectator, with no interest in his dull, lack-lustre eyes. For an hour the old man had put me through a practice with a small sword (he was the best fencer I have ever seen), until I almost cried out from weariness, and we changed the exercise for pistol practice. Now we returned to Belair, and despite my complaining, I was forced to take up the foils again, and actually to defend myself, for my uncle kept me up to my work by now and then giving me a clip over the thigh or forearm. At last I grew angry, and pressed him so close that a smile of pleasure drew his lips, and he muttered "bravo" two or three time beneath his breath. Suddenly I noticed a gray shadow cross his face, and his eyelids drooped. He raised his hand, and without a word fell forward at my feet. It was one of the worst attacks that he had experienced, and for five days Gaston and I nursed him, and I found no chance to get away to the pasture bars, or to the flat rock where Mary had placed the book we had spoken of.
On the sixth day my uncle was up and as spry as ever, but now I found that I was practically under surveillance; wherever I went the frightful Gaston would go also. He was a most unpleasant person to have around, for although his senses were most acute and he possessed the cunning of a wolf, it was impossible to carry on a conversation with him. He had an impediment in his speech, a combination of a stutter and the result of having no roof to his mouth, that made his utterances sound like those of a savage or wild beast. To say "yes" or "no" was an effort for him, and he usually expressed his meaning by making signs.