Part 41 (2/2)

”A dead man.”

”Aw, then! That's not Gard.”

”It's the only man here, anyway. Pull close up, Philip--”

”Not in my boat, John Drillot!” from Peter.

”We must take this to the Senechal,” said John angrily. ”If you don't want to come you can wait here. If you don't make less noise, I will knock you on the head myself,” and he jumped down into the boat, and took the dead man from Trevna, and laid him carefully in the bows. The others jumped in, and Peter, sooner than be knocked on the head or left behind, sulkily followed, and sat himself on the extreme edge of the stern as far away from the dead man as he could get.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

HOW JULIE MEDITATED EVIL

Nance had crouched all the morning, in the bracken above Breniere, on the knife-edge of expectancy. And behind her, at a safe distance, crouched Julie Hamon, watching Nance and L'Etat at the same time, as a cat in the shade watches a sparrow playing in the suns.h.i.+ne.

”What will be the end? What will be the end?” sighed Nance. They had all gone down out of sight, across there, and it was terrible to sit here waiting, waiting, waiting for what she feared.

If they had indeed run Gard to his hiding-place, as Philip Vaudin had said, there could be but one possible end to it; and she sat, sad-eyed and wistful, waiting for them to come up again.

It seemed as if they would never come, and she never took her eyes off the rock wall on L'Etat.

And then at last she sprang to her feet. One of them had come up again.

She could not see which. Then the others appeared, and they seemed to stand talking. Then one went off round the slope and another ran after him, and the other two went back into the rock wall.

What could they be at? She stood gazing intently.

The two came up again, and--yes--they carried something, or one of them did, and they two went off round the corner also. And presently she saw the boat coming round, and saw by its head that it was for the Creux.

She turned and sped across by the same way as yesterday, and Julie followed her at a safe distance. And it seemed to Nance, as she hurried through the familiar hedge-gaps and lanes and across the headlands, that the world had lost its brightness, and that life was desperately hard and trying.

On Derrible Head there might be a chance of seeing. She ran up to the highest point by the old cannon, just as the boat was coming in under La Conchee.

And--oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! yes--there, in the bows, lay the body of a man!--and the tears she had kept back all day broke out now in a fury of weeping. She could hardly see, but she ran on, falling at times and bruising herself, staggering to her feet again, stumbling blindly through a mist of tears.

The boat was drawn up by the time she got there, and a curious crowd surrounded it. She pushed through. She must see.

And then the weight fell off her heart, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming. For this poor thing, whatever it was, was not Stephen Gard and never had been.

She wanted to sing and dance and scream her joy aloud. They had not found him.

”What is this, John Drillot?” asked Julie, alongside her, black with anger, as she pointed to the body.

”Ma fe--a ghost, they say. John Trevna shot him, but he had been dead a long time before that, though he was alive last night, for Peter had hold of his leg as he ran.”

”And where is the other--the one you went for?”

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