‘It may keep it off for a day or two—not longer. You have the bottle there, but most of the drug is with your luggage at the inn.’
His parable was true enough; we had only two or three dozen cartridges apiece.
‘But there’s plenty of food for Constantine’s rifle,’ said I, pointing to the muzzle of it, which protruded from the window.
He suddenly became impatient.
‘Your answer, sir?’ he demanded peremptorily.
‘Here it is,’ said I. ‘I’ll keep the island and I’ll see Constantine hanged.’
‘So be it, so be it,’ he cried. ‘You are warned; so be it!’ Without another word he turned his pony and trotted rapidly off down the road. And I went back to the house feeling, I must confess, not in the best of spirits. But when my friends heard all that had passed, they applauded me, and we made up our minds to ‘see it through,’ as Denny said.
The day passed quietly. At noon we carried the old lord out of his house, having wrapped him in a sheet; we dug for him as good a grave as we could in a little patch of ground that lay outside the windows of his own chapel, a small erection at the west end of the house. There he must lie for the present. This sad work done, we came back and—so swift are life’s changes—killed a goat for dinner, and watched Watkins dress it. Thus the afternoon wore away, and when evening came we ate our goat-flesh and Hogvardt milked our cows; then we sat down to consider the position of the garrison.