So the rain fell, and the wayfarers, keeping by the flare of incessant lightning to the raised roads, said to each other: "This is the deluge of God! Repent, while there is time!"
* * * * *
"What a terrific noise it makes on this iron roof," said Boy's mother, when the gift-giving was nearly over. "I'm glad Boy didn't come--he might have been frightened."
* * * * *
Was he frightened out in the dark alone? He had been. Not at first, however, when, half asleep, it had been almost a game to slip into the garden to find and kill Viljeon, and so, cunningly, when he found no one, into the belt of jungle adjoining it. He was not even frightened when, stumbling over the rough ground and his long white robe, he began to tire of his quest and tried to go back. It was not until the lightning which heralded the bursting of the rain-cloud turned the wilderness round him into black and white shadows that his courage left him, and he started to run blindly, too terrified to think, still too brave to scream.
But he was not frightened now. He was fast asleep, cuddled warmly on a big, broad breast against a big brown beard.
For that quaint little figure, sword in hand and with its ridiculous fluttering wings, had, almost in its first flight, run full tilt against a man who was crouching to leeward of a big tuft of tiger-grass--a man whose head was buried in his crossed arms, but who sprang to his feet with a curse at the unmistakable touch of humanity; then, as a flash of lightning showed him the white robe, the wings, the golden aureole of hair, fell back faltering.
"God in heaven!" he muttered in a foreign tongue. "What dost Thou here?"
Boy needed no question as to his wants. "Oh, please!" he panted, "take me home. I wanted to kill Vile John with the sword as Kunder sharped; but now I'd wather, please, give the Chrishmus fings--the peace, you know, an' all that--please, sir. I weally would wather--"
A sudden smile, half bitter, came to the man's bewildered face. "You wanted to kill Vile John," he said in English. "Why?"