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Updated: May 27, 2025
He nodded curtly, with an upward jerk of the head, as Lory climbed into the saddle and rode away; for there is nothing so difficult to conceal as horsemanship. "A soldier," muttered the stable-man. "A gendarme, as likely as not." De Vasselot did not ask the way, but trusted to Fortune, who as usual favoured him who left her a free hand.
That a couple of hours' hard riding brought him to his own lands, de Vasselot knew not nor heeded, for he was aware that he could establish his rights only by force of martial law, and with a miniature army at his back; for civil law here is paralyzed by a cloud of false witnesses, while equity is administered by a jury which is under the influence of the two strongest of human motives, greed and fear.
"I was told that story," she said, "but did not believe it." De Vasselot turned and looked at her, but could not see her averted face. His eyes were suddenly fierce. He was a fighter of a fighting stock and he instantly perceived that he was called upon at this moment to fight for the happiness of his whole life. He put out his hand and deliberately took hold of the skirt of her dress.
The autumn had been a dry one, so the whole mountain-side was clothed in shades of red and brown, rising from the scarlet of the blackberry leaves to the deep amber of the bare rock, where all vegetation ceased. The distant peeps of the valley of Vasselot glowed blue and purple, the sea was a bright cobalt, and through the broken clouds the sun cast shafts of yellow gold and shimmering silver.
And now de Vasselot could hear the Golo roaring in its rocky bed in the valley below. He knew that he was safe now, for he had merely to follow the river till it led him to the high-road at Ponte Alle Leccia. The country here was more fertile, and the track led through the thickest macquis.
De Vasselot turned with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, and busied himself with the girths of his saddle. At the touch and the sight of the buckles, his eyes became grave and earnest. And it is not only Frenchmen who cherish this cult of the horse, making false gods of saddle and bridle, and a sacred temple of the harness-room.
The track crossed the narrow, flat valley, where, a hundred years earlier, had been fought the last great fight that finally subjugated Corsica to France. Here de Vasselot passed through some patches of cultivated ground rare enough in this fertile land noted the shadowy shape of a couple of houses, and suddenly found himself on the high-road.
De Vasselot had taken the first steamer he could find at Marseilles, with a fine disregard for personal comfort, which was part of his military training and parcel of his sporting instincts. He was, like many islanders, a good sailor, for, strange as it may seem, a man may inherit from his forefathers not only a taste for the sea, but a stout heart to face its grievous sickness.
De Vasselot quitted the road where it begins sharply to ascend, and took the narrow path that follows the course of the river, winding through the olive groves around the great rock that forms a shoulder of Monte Torre, and breaks off abruptly in a sheer cliff.
It could not be chance that brought de Vasselot, and the Abbe Susini, and Mademoiselle Brun together to meet him at that time. He had been out-manoeuvred by some one of the three, and he shrewdly suspected by whom. There was nothing to do but face it and he faced it with a calm audacity. He simply ignored mademoiselle's blinking glance.
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