She stood and stared at him, and it was obvious that she believed that she had never seen him before; and his present appearance was not reassuring. She saw a very dirty man with a cut-throat’s beard and a haggard face, a starved face in which the blue eyes looked like the cold eyes of a corpse. There was nothing soldierly about him save the rifle on his shoulder. The disreputable indiscipline of Brent’s whole atmosphere suggested the one word “loot.”
“Monsieur, que faites-vous ici?”
She stood her ground, and kept her eyes on Brent’s face. She was a black-haired, black-eyed little woman with a skin of ivory; in age about six and twenty; very sturdy, very strong. Yet there was a softness about her, a white glow, a femininity, that were wholly pleasant and appealing. Manon Latour had a heart and courage. You saw the soul of her in her big, dark, watchful eyes, in her firm white throat, in her full-lipped, vivid mouth, in the confident poise of her head. She stood there and defied Brent—this disreputable straggler who had surprised her burying her treasure.
The brown dog was sniffing at her black skirt, and at the newly turned soil.
Brent managed to smile, and the thinness of his yellow face seemed to crack with it.
“Bon garçon,—bon garçon, moi. Allez, madame. Hang it,—do you think I would touch your stuff?”
She said nothing, but continued to watch his face.
Then Paul had an idea. He pointed the muzzle of his rifle at the place where she had been digging, fumbled for the bit of pencil he had found in Tom’s pocket, and walking to the wall, began to print three rapid and rather straggling letters on a piece of plaster.
“R. I. P.”
He stood back, cocked his head with a flick of humour, smiled.