"My dear friend Tiennet," replied the muleteer, "you are a good fellow with a good heart. Don't trouble your conscience for a thing which God, in the day of judgment, will not lay at your door, perhaps not at mine. Brother Nicolas is right, God is the only judge who renders just judgment, for he alone knows things as they are. He needs no witnesses and makes no inquiry into the truth. He reads all hearts; he knows that mine has never sworn nor sought the death of a man, even at the moment when I took that stick to punish the evil-doer. Those weapons are bad, but they are the only ones which our customs allow us to use in such cases, and I am not responsible for their use. Certainly a fight with fists alone would be far better,--such as you and I had that night in your field, all about my mules and your oats. But let me tell you that a muleteer is bound to be as brave and jealous for his honor as any of the great lords who bear the sword. If I had swallowed Malzac's insults without demanding reparation I should deserve to be expelled from our fraternity. It is true that I did not demand it coolly, as I ought to have done. I had met Malzac alone that morning, in that same wood of La Roche, where I was quietly at work without thinking of him. He again annoyed me with foolish language, declaring that Brulette was nothing better than a dried-wood picker, which means, with us, a ghost that walks by night,--a superstition which often helps girls of bad lives to escape recognition, for good people are afraid of these ghosts. So, among muleteers, who are not as credulous, the term is very insulting. Nevertheless, I bore with him as long as possible, until at last, driven to extremities, I threatened him in order to drive him away. He replied that I was a coward, capable of attacking him in a lonely place, but that I dared not challenge him to open fight with sticks before witnesses; that everybody knew I had never had occasion to show my courage, for when I was in company of others I always agreed with what they said so as not to be obliged to measure swords with them. Then he left me, saying there was a dance in the woods of Chambérat, and that Brulette gave a supper to the company; for which she had ample means, as she was the mistress of a rich tradesman in her own country; and, for his part, he should go and amuse himself by courting the girl, in defiance of me if I had courage to go and see him do it. You know, Tiennet, that I intended never to see Brulette again, and that for reasons which I will tell you later." "I know them," said I; "and I see that your sister met you to-night; for here, hanging to your ear below the bandage, is a token which proves something I had strongly suspected."