"gp46w10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parker Gilbert)

"I do it again."

He drew out a rosary, and disregarding Belward's outstretched hand, said:

"By the Mother of God, I will never leave you!" There was a kind of
wondering triumph in Belward's eyes, though he had at first shrunk from
Jacques's action, and a puzzling smile came.

"Wherever I go, or whatever I do?"

"Whatever you do, or wherever you go."

He put the rosary to his lips, and made the sign of the cross.

His master looked at him curiously, intently. Here was a vain, naturally
indolent half-breed, whose life had made for selfishness and
independence, giving his neck willingly to a man's heel, serving
with blind reverence, under a voluntary vow.

"Well, it's like this, Jacques," Belward said presently; "I want you, and
I'm not going to say that you'll have a better time than you did in the
North, or on the Slope; but if you'd rather be with me than not, you'll
find that I'll interest you. There's a bond between us, anyway. You're
half French, and I'm one-fourth French, and more. You're half Indian,
and I'm one-fourth Indian--no more. That's enough. So far, I haven't
much advantage. But I'm one-half English--King's English, for there's
been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there's the
royal difference. That's where I get my brains--and manners."

"Where did you get the other?" asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively.

"Money?"

"Not money--the other."

Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously. A laugh came back
on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a feeling
of awe. They were apart for a long time, then came together again, and
rode for miles without a word. At last Belward, glancing at a sign-post
before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--"The Whisk o' Barley,"--and
drew rein. He regarded the place curiously for a minute. The landlord
came out. Belward had some beer brought.

A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away. He touched his horse
with a heel. Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of
the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of
cross-examination. Presently he dismounted.

As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people,