And indeed I did, for my clothes had been rent by the thorns, my face and my hands torn, and doubtless I showed also some mental signs of the ordeal I had been through. For remember that though I had not met an adversary, I had braved the risk of it at every step. And I had made those steps.
“No,” I replied. “I have not even been fired at.”
“I heard a regular cannonade,” he said.
“Forty-seven times have I fired at a venture,” I answered. “And I have not been inaccurate in my aim. In that wood you will find the bodies of four squirrels, five pheasants, and two foxes.”
“But where is Lumme?” he inquired.
“Fled,” I replied, with an intonation of contempt I could not conceal.
“What! funked it?”
“I saw no sign of him.”
“By Jove! that's bad,” said Tonks, though in so matter-of-course a tone that I was astonished. A man of a sluggish spirit, I fear, was my cricketing second.
“Let us call Shafthead,” I said. “For myself, my honor is satisfied, and I shall leave him and you to deal with the runaway.”