"I'll get some more chairs," Frank said. "We can talk in here. The old gentleman is sound asleep now. Could you use a drop of brandy, Auguste?" Auguste nodded. "That might ease the pain." He thought not only of the pain from the rifle blow, but of the pain in his heart from having lost Victoire despite his promise to his father. And the pain of tearing himself away from Nancy. He and Frank quietly removed chairs from the other upstairs rooms where the Hopkins children were sleeping. Frank went down to the kitchen and came back with a tray bearing three small bowl-shaped crystal glasses and a cut-glass decanter that twinkled in the lamplight. "Handsome glassware," Auguste said, seating himself and carefully setting his backpack between his feet. "From the time of Louis the Fifteenth," Nicole said. "One of the things Papa brought over from the old chateau in France. And he gave it to Frank and me as a wedding present. At least Raoul won't get his hands on this." Auguste said, "But Raoul has everything else, because father left it all to me. I told him he should will it to you; I should have insisted." His face burned with shame. Frank said, "I doubt we'd have held onto the estate any longer than you did. And, frankly, I don't want it any more than you do. I don't know how Nicole feels." Now that the land was irrevocably lost to him, Auguste was no longer so sure that he did not want it. He twisted in his chair, angry at himself for his uncertainty. Nicole shook her head. "I'm a wife and mother. I'm not prepared to be a chatelaine. Especially when I'd have to fight that--that beast." As Frank poured an inch of the warm amber liquid into each of their glasses, Auguste noticed that his fingers were, as always, blackened. He must never get the stains of his trade off his hands. Frank said, "I'm going to write in the _Visitor_ about what happened today, tell what I saw, so the whole county will know what happened." Auguste looked at Nicole. He saw fear in her eyes, but she said nothing. "Why write about it?" Auguste said. "Raoul would do some harm to you. And it would change nothing. I won't even be here to read it." The last thing he wanted was these people, whom he cared about, getting into trouble because of him. Frank smiled faintly. "You know that unlike just about every other man in Smith County, I don't carry a gun." He pointed downward, in the direction of the press on the floor below them. "That's my way of fighting." For a moment Auguste felt ashamed that he was running away from that same fight. "Because you stood by me today my heart will always sing your praises. Do you think my father's spirit will be sad if I do not stay and fight for the land until I die?" "You almost did die, Auguste," Nicole said. _And I might yet, before I get away from here._ He sipped the brandy. It burned his tongue and his throat and lit a fire in his belly. It made him feel stronger.