But a smile shimmered at his mouth, giving to his careworn
face something almost beautiful, lifting the darkness from his powerful,
shaggy forehead. Many men knew Denzil by sight, few knew him in actual
being. There was a legend that once he was about to be married, but the
girl had suddenly gone mad and drowned herself in the river. No one
thought it strange that a month later the eldest son of the Tarboe family
had been found dead in the woods with a gun in his hand and a bullet
through his heart. No one had ever linked the death of Denzil's loved
one with that of Almeric Tarboe.
It was unusual for a Frenchman to give up his life to an English family,
but that is what he had done, and of late he had watched Junia with new
eager solicitude. The day she first saw Tarboe had marked an exciting
phase in her life.
Denzil had studied her, and he knew vaguely that a fresh interest,
disturbing, electrifying, had entered into her. Because it was Tarboe,
the fifteen years younger brother of that Almeric Tarboe who had died a
month after his own girl had left this world, his soul was fighting--
fighting.
As the smoke of Carnac's pipe came curling into the air, Denzil put on
his coat, and laid the hoe and rake on his shoulder.
"Yes, even when it's hard going we still have to march on--name of God,
yes!" he repeated, and he looked at Carnac quizzically.
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