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Torode laughed derisively as Elie Guérin set out with cautious step to lead his old horse over, with Judith Drillot clutching the saddle firmly and wearing a face that showed plainly that it was only a stern sense of duty to Elie that kept her up aloft. "Ma foi!" laughed Torode. "He would do it better in a boat. It's well seen that Monsieur Guérin was not born to the saddle.
Then we turned to the south-west and made for Jersey. As soon as it was light I saw Krok's eyes dwelling on our passenger with a very natural curiosity. Torode was unknown to him as to most of us, but there was a whole world of enquiry in his face as he sat looking down on the unconscious face below studying it, pondering it, catching, I thought, at times half glimpses of the past in it.
He's a treacherous devil. I'm not sure he hadn't a hand in our trouble also." "If he had any end to serve I could believe it of him." "But what end?" "Young Torode wants Carette." He laughed as though he deemed my horizon bounded by Carette, as indeed it was. "No need for him to make away with the whole of her family in order to get her," he said. "It would not commend him to her."
His head came round furiously, his heels slipped in the crumbling gravel, he kicked out wildly for safer holding, and in a moment he was over. At the first feel of insecurity behind, Torode slipped deftly out of the saddle. He still held the reins and endeavoured to drag the poor beast up.
Monsieur Torode was still leaning over the wall, and watching me fixedly, when I turned the corner of the outer ridge of rocks and crept away through the mazy channels towards Peter Port. When I got farther out, and could get an occasional glimpse of the rampart, he was still leaning on it and was still staring out at me just as I had left him. There was no difficulty in finding John Ozanne.
Torode shouted to him, dragged at the reins released them just in time. Those who saw it never forgot that last look on Black Boy's face, never lost the rending horror of his scream as his forelegs gave and he sank out of sight, never forgot the hideous sound of his fall as he rolled down the cliff to the rocks below. The girls hid their faces and sank sobbing into the heather.
It was chancy work at best, with a possible stumble up against death at every step. But life without Carette worse still, life with Carette in thrall to young Torode would be worse to me than death, and so I take no credit to myself for risking it for her. It was hers already, it did but seek its own.
My advice is let him go." "It's only natural, after all," said my grandfather, with a thoughtful nod. "Who's the best man to go with, George?" "Torode of Herm makes most at it, they say. But " "A rough lot, I'm told, and he has to keep a tight hand on them. But I know nothing except from hearsay. I've never come across him yet."
Then they shouldered me again, and stumbled up a rocky way and along a passage where their feet echoed hollowly, and finally laid me down and went away. Torode untied my hands and feet and took off the bandage. By the light of his lantern I saw that I was in a rock room, with rough natural walls, and sweet salt air blowing in from the farther end.
And when I turned to look at Torode the dumb misery in his eyes assured me in my own mind that it was so, for I had seen just that look in Krok's eyes many a time. Another whole week I waited, visiting Krok three times in all, and the last time finding him living quite contentedly in the finished house.
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