“It is there to hang those they have taken, very like,” the man answered, stupidly practical. And then other men came up, and stared at it and growled in their beards. Presently there were eight or ten on the roof of the gateway looking towards the land and discussing the thing; and by-and-by a man was descried approaching along the causeway with a white flag in his hand.
At that Carlat bade one fetch the minister. “He understands things,” he muttered, “and I misdoubt this. And see,” he cried after the messenger, “that no word of it come to Mademoiselle!” Instinctively in the maiden home he reverted to the maiden title.
The messenger went, and came again bringing La Tribe, whose head rose above the staircase at the moment the envoy below came to a halt before the gate. Carlat signed to the minister to come forward; and La Tribe, after sniffing the salt air, and glancing at the long, low, misty shore and the stiff ugly shape which stood at the end of the causeway, looked down and met the envoy’s eyes. For a moment no one spoke. Only the men who had remained on the gateway, and had watched the stranger’s coming, breathed hard.
At last, “I bear a message,” the man announced loudly and clearly, “for the lady of Vrillac. Is she present?”
“Give your message!” La Tribe replied.
“It is for her ears only.”
“Do you want to enter?”
“No!” The man answered so hurriedly that more than one smiled. He had the bearing of a lay clerk of some precinct, a verger or sacristan; and after a fashion the dress of one also, for he was in dusty black and wore no sword, though he was girded with a belt. “No!” he repeated, “but if Madame will come to the gate, and speak to me”
“Madame has other fish to fry,” Carlat blurted out.
