But little Billy Falstar, the day before, with the fiendish depravity of a mischief-making child, had set the match to a fuse of gunpowder all ready for it down at the Black Cat.
Resenting the treatment Jude had given him when he had voiced his observations about Gaston and Joyce, he had gone to the tavern to nurse his wounded feelings where company and safety abounded. His fear of Jude had departed.
Several men, Birkdale among them, were sitting about when Billy, sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of necessity notice must be taken, drew their attention.
"What's up, Billy?" asked Jock Filmer good-naturedly; "shingle struck a thin place in your breeches? Go around and buy a peppermint stick. Here's a cent. Peppermint ought to be as good for a pain in your hindquarters as it is for one in your first cabin. Let up, kid, and get cheerful!"
Billy accepted the coin, but turned a calculating eye on the others. If his news had had power to rouse Jude, how would it act now? Billy, freckled and sharp-eyed, was a born tragedian.
"'Tain't Ma," he said. "No more was it Pa; it was that Jude what beat me most to a jelly."
This was startling enough to awaken a new interest. Jude was too lazy on general principles to reduce any one to jelly unless the provocation had been great.
"What divilment was you up to?" Filmer asked with a leer.
"I didn't do nothing! 'Pon my soul, I didn't. I swear!"
This Billy did, fervently and fluently. The children of St. Angé swore with a guileless eloquence quite outside the sphere of wickedness. The matter was in them. It must, of course, come out. So Billy swore now with only an occasional hitch where his indignation muddled pronunciation.