, Grassette?" asked the Sheriff brusquely. His
official and officious intervention, behind which was the tyranny of
the little man, given a power which he was incapable of wielding wisely,
would have roused Grassette to a savage reply a half-hour before, but
now it was met by a contemptuous wave of the hand, and Grassette kept
his eyes fixed on the Governor.

"James Tarran Bignold!" Grassette said harshly, with eyes that searched
the Governor's face; but they found no answering look there. The
Governor, then, did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth,
and the man who had made of him an Ishmael. Still, Bignold had been
almost a stranger in the parish, and it was not curious if the Governor
had forgotten.

"Bignold!" he repeated, but the Governor gave no response.

"Yes, Bignold is his name, Grassette," said the Sheriff. "You took a
life, and now, if you save one, that'll balance things. As the Governor
says, there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near the day, and this
isn't a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the
ground, and--"

The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks.
"There is no time to be lost, Grassette. He has been ten days in the
mine."

Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily
bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had
been slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his
intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since
the day he had been deserted, it had ceased to control his actions--a
passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after
the first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was
before Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it
had then, and come forwards again to this supreme moment, with all that
life's harsh experiences had done for it, with the education that misery
and misdoing give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not
years, and the crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced
had lifted him into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him.
A moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and
passion; now they grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet,
with a strange, penetrating force and inquiry in them.

"Bignold--where does he come from? What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.

"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here