somewhere, why not go travelling with the Beast--aho? To have all
the life sucked out like these--eh? To see the flesh melt and the
hair go white, the eye to be one hour bright like a fire in a kiln,
and the next like mother on working vinegar--that's not living at
all--no."

The speech had evidently cost him much thinking, and when he ended,
his cheeks puffed out and a soundless laugh seemed to gather,
but it burst in a sort of sigh. I would have taken his hand that
moment, if I had not remembered when once he drew back from such
demonstrations. I did not speak, but nodded assent, and took to
drawing the leaves of corn between my fingers as he was doing.

After a moment, cocking his head at me as might a surly
schoolmaster in a pause of leniency, he added, "As quiet, as quiet,
and never did he fly at door of cage, nor peck at jailer--aho!"

I looked at him a minute seriously, and then, feeling in my
coat, handed to him the knife which I had secreted, with the words,
"Enough for pecking with, eh?"

He looked at me so strangely, as he weighed the knife up and
down in his hand, that I could not at first guess his thought;
but presently I understood it, and I almost could have told what
he would say. He opened the knife, felt the blade, measured it
along his fingers, and then said, with a little bursting of the
lips, "Poom! But what would ma'm'selle have thought if Gabord
was found dead with a hole in his neck--behind? Eh?"

He had struck the very note that had sung in me when the temptation