“O yes,” I replied, “it looks like that, but there are many ups and downs even in a dog fight; probably the under dog had its turn after a while, and it is surprising how much chewing they can stand from each other and be but little the worse.”
Pasquale turned upon me speechless for the moment with horror. Then, ere his glance had lengthened to a stony glare, he said with an apparent effort at restraint, “But I forgot you did not see the animals, and cannot therefore know how terrible it all was.”
“Well, be content,” I hastened to say by way of encouragement. “You did your best; you knocked one coal-heaver almost senseless, and you tore the other’s neck-tie to pieces, besides lacerating his face, and——”
“Do you know,” he interrupted, striding up to me with his eyes aflame and the veins standing out round and black on his forehead, “do you know, sir, that I would have liked to tear those men limb from limb for stopping me, and I almost think I would have done so, if I had not been prevented.”
And I thought so too, as I gazed at him standing there almost suffocated with the fury of passion.
This strange anomaly—this combination of dove-like tenderness, and tigerish ferocity was a complete mystery to me, and I felt bewildered at the contemplation of it.
After a time my friend’s mood changed, and he apologized humbly for his outbreak. “I am entirely unhinged by the events of the day,” he said gently. “I am not usually like this, I can assure you”—a statement fully borne out by my after-experience of him, for a brighter, gentler, more delightful companion I shall never again meet in this world.
His last words as he left me were: “I am not feeling well, and shall go away for a week, but when I return you and I must see much of each other.”
CHAPTER II.
LIFE in London had great attractions for me during the first year of my residence in that wonderful city. Not because of the gaieties of the metropolis, for of those I knew nothing, while of its more solid attractions my ignorance was equally great.