“We are a race of executioners, but we are not the unnurtured herd that people fancy.  ’Tis the will of Berne that made me what I am, and no desire nor wants of my own.”

“The charge is honorable, as are all that come of the state,” repeated the other, with the formal readiness in which set phrases are uttered; “the charge is honorable for one of thy birth.  God assigns to each his station on earth, and he has fixed thy duties.  When Jacques Colis refused thy daughter he left his country to escape thy revenge?”

“Were Jacques Colis living, he would not utter so foul a lie!”

“I knew his honest and upright nature!” exclaimed Marguerite with energy!  “God pardon me that I ever doubted it!”

The judges turned inquisitive glances towards indistinct cluster of females, but the examination did not the less proceed.

“Thou knowest, then, that Jacques Colis is dead?”

“How can I doubt it, mein Herr, when I saw his bleeding body?”

“Balthazar, thou seemest disposed to aid the examination, though with what views is better known to Him who sees the inmost heart, than to me.  I will come at once, therefore, to the most essential facts.  Thou art a native and a resident of Berne; the headsman of the canton—­a creditable office in itself, though the ignorance and prejudices of man are not apt so to consider it.  Thou wouldst have married thy daughter with a substantial peasant of Vaud.  The intended bridegroom repudiated thy child, in face of the thousands who came to Vevey to witness the festivities of the Abbaye; he departed on a journey to avoid thee, or his own feelings, or rumor, or what thou wilt; he met his death by murder on this mountain; his body was discovered with the knife in the recent wound, and thou, who shouldst have been on thy path homeward, wert found passing the night near the murdered man.  Thine own reason will show thee the connexion which we are led to form between these several events, and thou art now required to explain that which to us seems so suspicious, but which to thyself may be clear.  Speak freely, but speak truth, as thou reverest God, and in thine own interest.”

Balthazar hesitated and appeared to collect his thoughts.  His head was lowered in a thoughtful attitude, and then, looking his examiner steadily in the face, he replied.  His manner was calm, and the tone in which he spoke, if not that of one innocent in fact, was that of one who well knew how to assume the exterior of that character.

“Herr Chatelain,” he said, “I have foreseen the suspicions that would be apt to fasten on me in these unhappy circumstances, but, used to trust in Providence, I shall speak the truth without fear.  Of the intention of Jacques Colis to depart I knew nothing.  He went his way privately, and if you will do me the justice to reflect a little, it will be seen that I was the last man to whom he would have been likely to let his intention be known.  I came up the St. Bernard, drawn by a chain that your own heart will own is difficult to break if you are a father.  My daughter was on the road to Italy with kind and true friends, who were not ashamed to feel for a headsman’s child, and who took her in order to heal the wound that had been so unfeelingly inflicted.”