To one of these Croisset
motioned the engineer, and as Howland sat down the bearded man turned
slowly and passed through a door. Jean shrugged his shoulders as the
other disappeared.
"_Mon Dieu_, that means that he leaves it all to me," he exclaimed. "I
don't wonder that it is hard for him to talk, M'seur. Perhaps you have
begun to understand!"
"Yes, a little," replied Howland. His heart was throbbing as if he had
just finished climbing a long hill. "That was the man who tried to kill
me. But Meleese--the--" He could go no further. Scarce breathing, he
waited for Jean to speak.
"It is Pierre Thoreau," he said, "eldest brother to Meleese. It is he
who should say what I am about to tell you, M'seur. But he is too full
of grief to speak. You wonder at that? And yet I tell you that a man
with a better soul than Pierre Thoreau never lived, though three times
he has tried to kill you. Do you remember what you asked me a short time
ago, M'seur--if I thought that _you_ were the John Howland who murdered
the father of Meleese sixteen years ago? God's saints, and I did until
hardly more than half an hour ago, when some one came from the South and
exploded a mine under our feet. It was the youngest of the three
brothers.
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