"He is Allan Gerard," said Corrie, his voice suppressed. "Say what you wish."
"I saw you ridin' past without a hat on, a while ago, an' I knew you. Want? I want you to stand somethin' for me to live on, Mr. Rose, you bein' a millionaire. I was on the spot after the smash an' heard the talk an' saw your wrench picked up. You'd treated me right, so I just lifted a bunch of tools from one of the machines standin' empty, an' sprinkled them around that twelve-mile race track. The newspaper fellows found the things, too, an' kind of thought less of findin' the one where you smashed Mr. Gerard. One fellow help another, eh? No use of goin' to Sing Sing, neither."
Corrie's movement was swiftly accurate and uncalculated as the leap of some enraged primitive creature. His ungloved fist struck with an impact sounding like the slap of an open hand, and flung the man crashing through the hedge of lilac-bushes to roll over and over on the ground, clutching blindly at the turf strewn with broken leaf-buds.
"Corrie!" Gerard cried stern warning, too late, starting from his seat.
Corrie swung about, his blue eyes blazing in his flushed face, his lips parted in a scarlet line across the white gleam of his set teeth.
"If he comes near me again, I'll kill him!" he panted savagely.
"It seems to me you have done enough of that sort of thing, already," Gerard retorted, equally angered.
The biting reminder was not premeditated; it leaped out of brief wrath and all the aching memories stirred by the episode. But it was none the less effective. Gerard himself did not realize how effective until he saw all the color and animation wiped from the young face and saw Corrie put his hand across his eyes.
"Corrie!" he exclaimed, cut deeply by his own cruelty, amazedly furious with himself. "Corrie——"