'I didn't. If I had, it would have been because he drew his against me.'
'And why should he have done so?'
'Ventrebleu! for as many reasons as there are craft in the harbor.'
'For example?'
'Well, that I should have got a place in a ship's company that he was trying for.'
'Such things as that? is it possible?'
'Oh, for smaller things. That a lass should have given me a dozen oranges she had promised him.'
'How odd!' said Madame Bernier, with a shrill kind of laugh. 'A man who owed you a grudge of this kind would just come up and stab you, I suppose, and think nothing of it?'
'Precisely. Drive a knife up to the hilt into your back, with an oath, and slice open a melon with it, with a song, five minutes afterward.'
'And when a person is afraid, or ashamed, or in some way unable to take revenge himself, does he—or it may be a woman—does she, get some one else to do it for her?'