He turned; but thrilled with priestly wrath, to feel
His sacred arm locked in a grasp of steel.
A bolder man might have got nervous, finding himself on a lonely hill-side, face to face with such an adversary, reading, too, the savage meaning of those murderous eyes. Remember that Mr. Fullarton held Royston capable of any earthly crime. His own short-lived anger was instantly annihilated; the sweat of mortal terror broke out over all his livid face; his lips could hardly gasp out an unintelligible prayer for mercy.
The soldier’s stern face settled into an expression of contempt: in his gentlest moods he could find little sympathy for purely physical fear.
“Don’t faint,” he said; “there is no occasion for it. Do you think I shall ‘slay you as I slew the Egyptian yesterday?’ Well, I have scanty respect for your office, especially when its privileges are abused. If it were not for good reasons, I would serve you worse than I did that drunken scoundrel who frightened you almost to death down there among the vines; but that don’t suit my purpose. Listen: if you dare to interfere again, by word, or deed, or sign, in the affairs of me and mine, I know a better way of making you repent it.”
As soon as he saw that there was no real danger to life or limb, the chaplain’s composure began to return. He launched forth immediately into a gallant though incoherent defiance. Royston’s features never for an instant changed or softened in their scorn.
“Fair words,” he retorted; “but I’ll make your bubbles burst. You don’t monopolize all the resources of the Private Inquiry Office;” and, stooping down, he whispered a dozen words in the other’s ear. They related to a charge brought against Mr. Fullarton years ago, so circumstantial and difficult to disprove that, with all the advantages of counter-evidence at hand, it had well-nigh borne him down. He knew right well that, if it were once revived here abroad, where the lightest suspicion is caught up and used so readily, the consequences would be nothing short of utter ruin. He was a poor man, with a large family. No wonder if he quailed.
“You know—you know,” he gasped, “that it is a vile, cruel falsehood.”
To do him justice, he spoke the simple truth there.
With a cold, tranquil satisfaction, the major contemplated his victim’s agony.