“Run!” I cried. “You can be miles away before he will be able to move, even.”
Jason leaped from me, his eyes staring maniacally.
“You fool!” I cried; “go! Leave him to me! You can be at Southampton before he is out of the field here. Even if he is able to walk by morning, which I doubt, he has me to reckon with!”
Some little nerve came to him, once standing outside the baneful influence of the eyes. He dashed his hand across his forehead, gave me one rapid, wild glance of gratitude and renewed hope, and, turning, ran for his life into the darkness.
As his footsteps clattered faintly down the road I returned to grapple with his enemy.
I almost stumbled over him as I turned the corner. He had rolled and struggled so far in his rabid frenzy; and now, seeing me come back alone, he set up a yell of rage, reviling and cursing me and hurling impotent lightnings of hate after his escaped victim.
Gradually the storm of his passion mouthed itself away and he lay silent on the ground like a dead thing. Then I moved to him; knelt and softly pulled him by the sleeve.
“Duke, shall I bind it up for you?”
“What? My heart?” He spoke with his face in the grass. “Bind it in a sling, you fool—it’s a heavy stone—and smite the accursed Philistine on the forehead with it.”
“Has this bitter trouble dehumanized you altogether? Do you blame me in this? He was my brother.”