"The possibility of this attitude on your part had occurred to me, John Lee. Unfortunately for yourself, you have never understood me. I am no enemy to any living man. I wish the world well. But I, too, have my life to live, and those who intervene between me and my plans and purposes pay for their blunder. I will tell you something, since we have no witness. It may help you to comprehend me and draw you out of the jaws of death, wherein frankly you stand at this moment. I killed my late uncle, Norman Norcot. I took his gun while he sat in thought, and thrust it under his chin and shot him like a rabbit. Do you wish to follow him?"
Without answering, John Lee dashed forward at Norcot's throat; but Peter's hand, though in his pocket, was on a pistol trigger. He leapt swiftly aside, and before Lee could turn, the wool-stapler had fired into his body. For a second John stood shaking; then he sank forward and fell on his face. Frightened blackbirds fled shrieking, with shrill chink-chink-chink-chinketty-chink; the smoke arose and hung in a thin flat layer under the boughs of the trees.
"Lucky wretch!" said the murderer, looking down. "'Death is a morsel best bolted whole,' as divine Montaigne remarks. Naught is nastier to chew upon. May I go as easy when my turn comes!
"'Light lay the earth, John Lee, upon thy clay—
That so the dogs may easier find their prey.'
Yes—Squire Yeoland's dogs, and his gamekeepers. It remains to plan your next appearance before I hasten on to my own."
He stood and reflected, then nodded his head quickly.
"They stand along the covert side at regular intervals, and happily I know how to find 'em. Rest there, 'thou wretched, rash, intruding fool,' until I've found what I seek."
He put up his pistol, then looked at his watch.
"How time flies!"
Turning round, Peter now plunged into the forest, and at a covert side, where a drive was cut through dense larch woods with undergrowth of furze and briar, he began to make search, and advanced, foot by foot, with the utmost caution. Each yard of the ground he scrutinised as though his own life depended upon it; and, indeed, the man's present quest did not lack for personal danger. Here, a yard within the pheasant coverts, were set spring-guns two feet above the ground. The countryside raged against these infernal engines, but at that date they were legal, and a man might place them in his own preserves if it pleased him to do so.