Young Harry staggered, waved his sword aimlessly, then dropped it, pivoted on himself, and fell. He lay, face downward, and after a moment a coil of blood, like a slender serpent, began to move sinuously into the grey of the gravel.
The peacock, from his perch, peered down on the scene with stupid eyes, cocking its tufted head inanely from side to side.
The approving smile was petrified on Edward Hare’s face. He clapped his hand over his mouth like a frightened child.
“Dead, ecod!” he whispered to himself. Then, hanging further over the wall, he hailed Ratcliffe in a quavering shout:—
“Hist, coz—hast never killed him?”
The victor, leaning on his weapon, gazing in sombre abstraction at the prostrate form, started and looked up. He smiled hideously with his swollen lip.
“Be it mortal?” mouthed Edward again.
Ratcliffe answered stonily:—
“Mortal? I trust so. The affront was mortal.”