“You insult me! You dare to do it?”
Her blood was surging in her heart. As she looked into this man’s dark and evil face she thought of all the distress he had caused her father, and a wave of loathing swept over her, nerved her to defy him to the uttermost, and to proclaim all the counts she had against him.
“I dare do it,” she said, “because you made my own dear papa’s life full of bitterness and pain——”
“I! I never touched him, hardly spoke to him. I don’t care to have to do with parsons.”
“You made his life one of sorrow through your godless, lawless ways, leading his poor flock astray, and bidding them mock at his warnings and despise his teachings. Almost with his last breath he spoke of you, and the wretchedness of heart you had caused him. And then you dared—yes—you dared—you dared to burst into our house where he lay dead, with shameful insolence to disturb its peace. And now—” she gasped, “and now, ah! you lie when you say you are a Dane, and talk of cutting and lashing the dead father’s little boy on his father’s burial day. You are but one thing I can name—a coward!”
Did he mean it? No! But blinded, stung to madness by her words, especially that last, he raised his right arm with the crop.
Did she mean it? No! But in the instinct of self-preservation, thinking he was about to strike her, she dashed the basket of buttons in his face, and they flew right and left over him, against the head of Black Bess, a rain of fragments of mirror, brass, steel, mother-of-pearl, and bone.
The effect was instantaneous. The mare plunged, reared, threw Coppinger backward from off his feet, dashed him to the ground, dragged him this way, that way, bounded, still drawing him about by the twisted reins, into the hedge, then back, with her hoofs upon him, near, if not on, his head, his chest—then, released by the snap of the rein, or through its becoming disengaged, Bess darted down the lane, was again brought to a standstill by the glittering fragments on the ground, turned, rushed back in the direction whence she had come, and disappeared.
Judith stood panting, paralyzed with fear and dismay. Was he dead, broken to pieces, pounded by those strong hoofs?
He was not dead. He was rolling himself on the ground, struggling clumsily to his knees.