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Like all mobs this one had no reason, no sense. They were baulked in their malign intentions, and this man, Maitre Ranulph Delagarde, was the cause of it that was all they knew. A stone was thrown at Delagarde as he stood in the doorway, but it missed him. "Oh-oh-oh!" the girl exclaimed, shrinking. "O shame! O you cowards!" she added, her hands now indignantly beating on the hus.
"You're going to stop that? They'd put me in prison." Ranulph stooped over his father, his eyes alive with anger, his face blurred with disgust. "Go home," said he, "and never mention this again while you live, or I'll take you to prison myself." Ranulph watched his father disappear down the Rue d'Egypte, then he retraced his steps to the Vier Marchi.
Two jurats who had waited on the outskirts of the crowd, furtively watching the effect of their sentence, burst in, as distracted as the Vicomte. "Hang the man again and the whole world will laugh at you," Ranulph said. "If you're not worse than fools or Turks you'll let him go. He has had death already. Take him back to the prison then, if you're afraid to free him."
The Undertaker's Apprentice was the only person who kept a cool head. The solution of the problem of the rope for afterwards, but he had been sent there to hang a man, and a man he would hang somehow. Without more ado he jumped upon Mattingley's shoulders and began to drag him down. That instant Ranulph Delagarde burst through the mounted guard and the militia.
Cringing, the old man drew himself over to the wall. Detricand, seating himself in a chair, held the candle up before him. After a moment he said: "What I want to know is, how could a low-flying cormorant like you beget a gull of the cliffs like Maitre Ranulph?" The old man did not answer, but sat blinking with malignant yet fearful eyes at Detricand, who continued: "What did you come back for?
Then a new thought came to him. "Do you think your not speaking all these years was best for the child?" he asked. Her lips trembled. "Oh, that thought," she said, "that thought has made me unhappy so often! It comes to me at night as I lie sleepless, and I wonder if my child will grow up and turn against me one day. Yet I did what I thought was right, Ranulph, I did the only thing I could do.
When day came clear and bright, it was known that Carterette as well as Ranulph had vanished. Mattingley shook his head stoically, but Richambeau on the Victoire was as keen to hunt down one Jersey-Englishman as he had ever been to attack an English fleet. More so, perhaps. Meanwhile the birds kept up a wild turmoil and shrieking. Never before had any one heard them so clamorous.
The same slight, mischievous smile crossed her lips now as eleven years ago in the Rue d'Egypte, and recalling that moment, she replied: "Yes, sir Philip!" At that instant the figure of a man appeared on the shingle beneath, looking up towards them. They did not see him. Guida's hand was still in Philip's. The man looked at them for a moment, then started and turned away. It was Ranulph Delagarde.
Your faith was blind, Ranulph, you see it was blind." "What I know is this," he repeated with dogged persistence "what I know is this: that whatever was wrong, there was no wrong in you. My life a hundred times on that!"
Long ago she had shrewdly guessed that Guida's interest lay elsewhere than with Ranulph, and a few months back she had fastened upon Philip as the object of her favour. That seemed no weighty matter, for many sailors had made love to Carterette in her time, and knowing it was here to-day and away to-morrow with them, her heart had remained untouched.
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