Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/130

“Oh!” said Turnbull shortly.

“Yes, my friends,” said the little man, with an animated countenance, fluttering his fingers in the air, “it was no chance that led you to this garden; surely it was the caprice of some old god, some happy, pitiless god. Perhaps it was his will, for he loves blood; and on that stone in front of him men have been butchered by hundreds in the fierce, feasting islands of the South. In this cursed, craven place I have not been permitted to kill men on his altar. Only rabbits and cats, sometimes.”

In the stillness MacIan made a sudden movement, unmeaning apparently, and then remained rigid.

“But to-day, to-day,” continued the small man in a shrill voice. “To-day his hour is come. To-day his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Men, men, men will bleed before him to-day.” And he bit his forefinger in a kind of fever.

Still, the two duellists stood with their swords as heavily as statues, and the silence seemed to cool the eccentric and call him back to more rational speech.

“Perhaps I express myself a little too lyrically,”