Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/125

good thing in God’s world! I’ve walked about these damned fields and longed to see somebody cut up and killed and the blood running. Ha! Ha!”

And he made sudden lunges with his stick at the trunk of a neighbouring tree so that the ferrule made fierce prints and punctures in the bark.

“Excuse me,” said MacIan suddenly with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child, “excuse me, but . . .”

“Well?” said the small fighter, brandishing his wooden weapon.

“Excuse me,” repeated MacIan, “but was that what you were doing at the door?”

The little man stared an instant and then said: “Yes,” and Turnbull broke into a guffaw.

“Come on!” cried the little man, tucking his stick under his arm and taking quite suddenly to his heels. “Come on! Confound me, I’ll see both of you eat and then I’ll see one of you die. Lord bless me, the gods must exist after all—they have sent me one of my day-dreams! Lord! A duel!”

He had gone flying along a winding path between the borders of the kitchen garden, and in the increasing twilight he was as hard to follow