"Well, what do you want me to do?"
"Go away," said Fergus, "go away and let her alone. Go back whur ye come from, an' break no hearts."
Although the words were gruff and short, there was a world of pleading in them, too. Fergus had no desire to hurt Nort, but he wanted to get him away forever from Hempfield. It was only Anthy that he had in mind. He must save Anthy. Nort felt this note of appeal, and answered in kind:
"I can't do it, Fergus, and you have no right to ask me. If Anthy tells me to go, I will go. It is between us. Can't you see it?"
"Wull," said Fergus, hopelessly, "you an' me must ha' it oot."
With this, Fergus turned about and began to take off his coat. Nort remembered long afterward the look of Fergus deliberately taking off his coat—his angular, bony form, his wiry, freckled neck, his rough, red hair, his loose sleeves held up by gayly embroidered armlets, the trousers bagging in extremity at his knees. Even in that moment he felt a curious deep sense of pity, pity mingled with understanding, sweep over him. He had come some distance in the few short hours since Anthy's face had looked up into his.
Fergus laid his coat and hat at the trunk of a beech tree and began slowly to roll up his sleeves.
"Will ye fight wi' yer coat on or off?"
Nort suddenly laughed aloud. It was unbelievable, ridiculous! Why, it was uncivilized! It simply wasn't done in the world he had known.
Nort had never in his life been held down to an irrevocable law or principle, never been confronted by an unescapable fact of life. Some men go through their whole lives that way. He had never met anything from which there was not some easy, safe, pleasant, polite way out—his wit, his family connections, his money. But now he was looking into the implacable, steel-blue eyes of Fergus MacGregor.