"Yes, I suppose I was angry. He was most unjust to me."
"He had used very violent language to you, had he not?"
"Yes."
"He had threatened your life if you tried to see his daughter again?"
"Yes."
"Now, Mr. Swain, as you stood there, angry and humiliated, didn't you make up your mind to follow him to the house and have it out with him?"
Swain smiled.
"I'm lawyer enough to know," he said, "that a question like that isn't permissible. But I'll answer it. I may have had such an impulse—I don't know; but the sight of the cobra there in the arbour put it effectually out of my head."
"You still think there was a cobra?"
"I am sure of it."