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"I am all for the de Vasselots I," he said. Colonel Gilbert leant out of the window, and quietly took stock of this valuable adherent. "At that time," continued the speaker, "we had at Bastia a young prefect who took himself seriously. He was going to reform the world.
He drew forward the chair that Denise had just quitted, and sat down close to Lory in quite a friendly way, for there is a bond that draws fighting men and roaming men together despite accidental differences of station. "One sees," he said, "that you are a de Vasselot. And I belong to the de Vasselots ! Whenever I have got into trouble it has been on that side."
We hear strange stories in the macquis and things that one would never expect to reach the mountains. They say that Colonel Gilbert busies himself in stirring up the Peruccas and the de Vasselots against each other an affair that has slept these thirty years." "Ah!"
"Yes, and you should know it, you who are the chief of the de Vasselots, and have this woman to deal with; the women are always the worst. The chateau, they say, was burnt down, and the women disappeared from the Casa Perucca in the same week. The Casa Perucca is empty now, and the Chateau de Vasselot is gone at Olmeta they are bored enough, I can tell you."
"Then you think that Fate has time to think of the affairs of the Vasselots?" "I believe it, monsieur le comte." They fell to talking of the past, and of the count. Then de Vasselot told his companion that he must be in Bastia in less than twenty-four hours, and Jean, whose gloomy face was drawn and pinched by past hardships, and a present desire for sleep, was alert in a moment.
There was only one letter for her. She turned it over and examined the seal: a bare sword with a gay French motto beneath it the device of the Vasselots. She opened the envelope after a long pause. It contained nothing but her own travel-stained letter, of which the seal had not been broken.
The next minute there was no head upon Perucca's shoulders." The narrator paused, and relighted his pipe with a foul-smelling sulphur match. "Yes," he said reflectively; "they are fine men, the de Vasselots." He tapped himself on the chest with the stem of his pipe, and made a gesture towards the mountains and the sky, as if calling upon the gods to hear him.
He was a very quick man, and folding the papers as he spoke, he tied them together with the faded pink tape which had been fingered by three generations of Vasselots. He laid the packet on the table close to Lory's hand. Then he glanced at Denise and fell into thought, arranging in his mind that which he had to say to her.
"Do I not remember his father, and are not all the de Vasselots cut with the same knife? I tell you there was a moon, and I saw him get off his horse, just here at the very door of Rutali's stable, and unstrap his sack, which he carried himself, and set off towards Olmeta."
No honest man has set his foot across the threshold since the de Vasselots left it thirty years ago only Jean is there, who has the evil eye. But there are plenty of Perucca's people up at Olmeta who would risk Jean's eye, and break down the doors of the chateau at a word from the Casa Perucca. But the girl there who is the head of the clan will not say the word.
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