“Oh, I don’t know. I’m going to let the poor devil off.”
“Going to—what?” snapped Le Sage. “Oh, look here, Wyvern, really you’re getting past a joke. A fellow like you is a nuisance to the whole community. Why it’s putting a premium on ‘slaag-tag.’ You catch this swine red-handed—a clear case for the ‘cat’—and then say you’re going to let him off. It isn’t fair to the rest of us. Don’t you see that?”
As a matter of fact Wyvern did see it; and felt a little uncomfortable.
“Perhaps you’re right, Le Sage,” he said. “But I’m too soft-hearted I suppose, and the sight of that other wretched devil, with that beastly snake tied round his leg, squirting blue death into him with every bite, is a sight I shan’t get rid of all in a hurry. And one human life, even that of a Kafir, is about expiation enough for a miserable sheep, worth eighteen bob or a pound at the outside. Eh?”
“I never heard such rot in my life,” was the answer. “All the more reason why the other chap’s hide should be made to smart for the whole mischief. Eh? Aren’t I right, Lalanté?”
A spirit of cussedness made him thus appeal to his daughter, a sort of longing to make her espouse his side against this other. But, even as he did so, he realised that he might as well have spared himself the trouble.
“No. I don’t think you are, since you put it to me,” she answered unhesitatingly. “On the contrary, I think you’d do much better to go and hold your enquiry and leave the other part of the business alone altogether.”
“The devil you do!”
“That’s it. You’ve put it exactly, father,” laughed Lalanté; “You’ll be riding over there after dinner, I suppose. Well, I’ll go with you.”
He expostulated. It was no place for a girl. The sight of a dead Kafir was no sight for her, he pointed out with some show of reason.