“Do you know whether there is anything--about him--which wicked men can use to hurt him?” she stammered.
“I only know about him what I know, ma'm'selle,” he replied, with a gentle smile nestling in the wrinkles of his withered face.
“Could you tell me some of the things you know?” she asked, after much effort, striving to make her voice calmly inquiring.
Old Etienne set the rake and the pike-pole against the fence. “I will be quick in what I tell you, ma'm'selle, for I have no place to ask you to take the seat. But I'm sure you will listen very well to this what I say.”
But he did not go back as far as the pitiful figure on the canal bank, he made no mention of the water-soaked wad of paper which bore a mother's appeal to the world, he did not mention the key to Block Ten. He told the story of Walker Farr's devotion to a child. He did not dare to reveal to this stranger the identity of that child, because the telltale letter had been hidden from the coroner, and old Etienne stood in awe of the curt and domineering men who enforced the laws. But with simple earnestness and in halting speech he revealed the tenderness of Farr's nature and gave further testimony to her woman's understanding that this man who had come into her life possessed depths which she longed to probe.
“But the child!” she ventured, after Etienne had finished the story of how the two of them, voices in the wilderness of careless greed, had faced the masters of the city in the _hotel de ville_; “it seems strange that a man--that anybody should take a child and--” She hesitated.
“_Oui_, ma'm'selle, it seemed strange,” agreed the old man, studying her with sharp glance of suspicion--a gaze so strange that she shifted her eyes uneasily.
Ah, Etienne told himself, the law sometimes sent queer emissaries to probe for it--and he feared the law very much.
He must be very careful how he told any of the secrets which might trouble his good friend, who was now such a friend of the mighty folks; as for himself--well, he would willingly be a martyr if the law demanded--but he did fear that law!
“But he loved the child very much,” she hinted.
“So much that he will fight them because they have poisoned her--he will fight them and not be scare.”