the consequences of my deed. God knows I never meant more than an angry blow."
"Then no justice of God or man demands your life as forfeit; and yet the count in his first anger—At any rate, wait here for a moment or two, until I discover the real state of the case. If the vicomte is not dead, you ought all the more to keep out of your father's sight for a day or two. Will you wait here five minutes until I go up there and make a report?"
"Well, yes, I will wait five minutes here; not, mind you, that I fear my father's wrath, but that I will not intrude upon the grief of Mademoiselle de Rochenbois, whom even from this distance I can hear calling so piteously upon her Gaston."
The abbé had not paused for more than the first clause of this reply, but was already springing up the steps to the terrace, where all the inhabitants of the château were now assembled; and presently François, himself invisible beneath the dense shadows of the garden, perceived that his father, the abbé, and two men-servants were lifting, and heavily carrying in at the open doors, a something—what was it?—a corpse, or a wounded man? Was he, standing there in that fragrant garden, where so few hours before he had sported like a child with his cousin, was he a murderer? His brother's blood was on his hand indeed, but was it life-blood?
And the young baron, asking himself this question, facing this possibility, made in. those five minutes one of those strides in life which eventless years may not measure, as the Alpine adventurer, losing his hold
