“That kind of thing always sets my blood boiling, but that in a city under our flag an outrage of that kind should be attempted made me wild. I guess from the looks of my hands that maybe I did punch rather hard.” Rising, Jack walked to the open door between the two bedrooms and added:
“I don’t mind just a plain fight, or even sometimes a murder, but when it comes to a brute assaulting a woman or child, I’m damned if I don’t become like one of Victor Hugo’s characters, ‘I see red.’ Temper seems to surge in my very blood.”
Jack’s face, as he spoke, wore an angry scowl, to which the earnest gesticulations with his bandaged fists gave double meaning.
“Of course it surges in your blood, old chap, as it does on such occasions in mine and every other decent descendant of Shem and Japheth on earth,” replied Tom Maxon.
XI.
The Scottish Bard has written that to see fair Melrose Abbey a-right, one must visit it in the moon’s pale light. To see New England in its greatest glory one must visit that section of hallowed memories in the summer season.
Then it is that granite hills are wrapped in emerald mantles. Then it is that hill-sides, slopes and meadows are dimpled with countless daisies, peeping enticingly from the face of smiling nature. Then it is brooks, released from winter’s icy bondage, laugh, sing, dance and gambol like merry maidens in some care-free frolic.