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Updated: May 25, 2025
"I have come," said the Governor, "to say to you, Grassette, that you still have a chance of life." He paused, and Grassette's face took on a look of bewilderment and vague anxiety. A chance of life what did it mean? "Reprieve?" he asked, in a hoarse voice. The Governor shook his head. "Not yet; but there is a chance. Something has happened.
The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette waved them back with a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man. "He spoil my home. He break me I have my bill to settle here," he said in a voice hoarse and harsh. "It is so? It is so eh? Spik!" he said to Bignold. "Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the wretched man gasped. "I'm dying!"
Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange, penetrating force and inquiry in them.
"Good girl Marcile. She loves you, but she is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his tongue refused its office. "Where is she-spik!" commanded Grassette in a tone of pleading and agony now. Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion towards his pocket, then lay still.
Jacques came back one night and found the house empty. Marcile had gone to try her luck with another man. That was the end of the upward career of Jacques Grassette. He went out upon a savage hunt which brought him no quarry, for the man and the woman had disappeared as completely as though they had been swallowed by the sea.
"Good girl Marcile. She loves you, but she is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his tongue refused its office. "Where is she? spik!" commanded Grassette, in a tone of pleading and agony now. Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion toward his pocket, then lay still.
Then he saw himself, his money all gone, but the luck still with him, at Mass on the Sunday before going to the backwoods lumber-camp for the winter, as boss of a hundred men. He had a way with him, and he had brains, had Jacques Grassette, and he could manage men, as Michelin the lumber-king himself had found in a great river-row and strike, when bloodshed seemed certain.
Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground. They saw him lean forward and his hands stretched out with a fierce gesture. It was the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring. They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a skeleton, with eyes starting from his head and fixed on Grassette in agony and stark fear.
Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was, and that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging himself on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went to the Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation, everyone would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would face each other and all that would happen then.
The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man's rage was not a thing to see and they both came from the little parish of St. Francis, and had passed many an hour together. "Never mind, Grassette," he said gently. "Call me what you will. You've got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don't want your life for the life you took." Grassette's breast heaved.
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