“I mean,” blurted the lawyer, “that it is your money that has hired Bodfish to carry Rissy Mayo out of town to-day, and it’s your money that she has in her pocket to pay railroad fare from Square Harbour to the place where you’re sending her.”
Bradish snapped his fingers under his accuser’s nose.
“That for your slander!” he cried. He started along the walk, but whirled and came close to Look. “There’s one thing I want to say to you,” he growled, “and it’s this—you seem bound and determined to plaster me with slander and it’s beneath my dignity to defend myself. And now you are working up a plot against me. You have heard that I was going to leave to-night for New York on business for Judge Willard and myself, and——”
“I have heard nothing of the sort,” retorted the Squire, his eyes gleaming dangerously.
“I say you have, and you must know I am going to his house now to discuss it. But no matter about that. I say you have engineered a plot against me, Look. You have fired that girl out of town and now you’ll turn around to-morrow and take advantage of a business trip that I must make and assert that I have run away with her. But I want to tell you now”—in his passion he drove his palm down on the lawyer’s shoulder—“if you dare to insinuate such a thing I’ll put you into State prison for criminal libel. I shall at once explain your dirty trick to Judge Willard and his daughter. And”—he drew back and looked at the Squire with malice in his eyes—“I shall furthermore tell Judge Willard what interest you have in this Mayo woman whom you have married off to a fool in order to hide your own guilt, you cheap apology for a man and lawyer.”
The Squire stood immovable and stared at the man, his lips moving wordlessly. But language refused to come.
For a few crowded seconds he almost admired the impudence of Bradish’s bluff, yet its masterly audacity fairly paralysed him.
In the storm of his feelings words seemed useless. The thought of his own impotence of defence, with this assailant in possession of Judge Willard’s ear and confidence, the memory of his own sorrows of waiting, the woes of the Mayo youth, whirled in his brain like torches. His fist tightened into a hard lump, his arm throbbed and itched, and the next moment, with a grunt, the Squire struck forward.
For the first and last time in his life Squire Phineas Look knocked a man down, and for one wild moment the primal Adam in him gloried in the act. He stood above Bradish with his arm poised and his fist smarting.
Then he looked up and beheld Sylvena Willard gazing at the miserable scene from the piazza of the big house.