Their wits worked together. Waiting for neither explanation nor command they turned upon me, and I, taken unawares, was as a child in their hands, hardly even grasping their intent. But Mademoiselle understood, and it was not so much her shriek of No! No! No! as the grasp of her hands upon my shoulders as we overhung the very lip of descent that held us there, staggering. From the shoulders her hands slipped forwards, inwards, till her fingers knit themselves under my chin, drawing me back against her bosom; and there upon the edge we hung a moment, too breathless and shaken for words. "Not his fault," she said at last, very hoarsely; "not his fault; tell them, Father Paul, for I cannot speak. Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur, forgive them, pray forgive them!" CHAPTER XXI "I TRUST YOU, COME WHAT MAY" What the priest said I do not know, for he spoke in patois, but the grip on my wrists and arms relaxed--reluctantly, I thought, as if it was a pity to lose so excellent an opportunity of paying off old grudges. Very slowly all four drew back, breathing heavily, as men do who struggle to overmaster their breathlessness. So we stood for half a minute, then I moved aside to the upward face of the rock. "Good!" said I, answering Mademoiselle's bitter mistrust, rather than her broken appeal upon the men's behalf. Against them I had no rancour; the fault was none of theirs, if their zeal lacked information. "Good! He is the Count de Foix! Let Foix and Navarre save him, only let them remember that there is fifty feet of a tumble below that bundle of linen there, and a bed of saw-toothed rocks to fall upon." It is my belief that for these thirty seconds, and the minute or two of stress which preceded them, Mademoiselle had utterly forgotten the boy's danger. Instantly she turned, and, pointing downward, broke into passionate command. Her speech was that quaint mixture of slurred French, Spanish and Basque which passed for a language in Morsigny, and so was strange to me. But the clamour of the boy's need made her meaning clear, even had she spoken no word. Nudely, ruthlessly clear, and a grim gladness warmed me to see that Hugues and the Spaniard grew cold as she waxed more and more passionate, her brief authority lost at the last in a pleading almost choked by tears. A word or two of the slurred French I understood, such as peace, Navarre, their duty, then Navarre again, and yet again Navarre. But to more than fifty feet of a fall left them cold. Peace? The peace of a loosened grip was too profound a peace for their taste! Duty? Surely the soul's first duty is to its own body! Navarre? They looked at one another; Navarre would have battles to fight, and dead men, even dead in duty, make no war. So they argued, speaking no word; and so, with my back against the cliff, I read their reasoning and laughed aloud. But the laughter died in my mouth.