He was dreaming of a rabbit running across his throat, when suddenly he awoke to find the rabbit a man’s arm. He gripped it, instinctively. It was nearly dark.
“What the devil are you doing?”
The man replied: “Why we thought you was dead.”
At the significance of the plural, his grasp relaxed and he sat up, staring at two men who had come upon him in his solitude. They were dirty, unshaven, not nice to look upon. On one of them he noticed a pair of old khaki slacks. As soon as he moved they knelt one on each side of him.
“And if I’d been dead, you’d have run through my pockets wouldn’t you?” Suddenly he clapped his hands in front of him. “You swine, you’ve got my watch and chain.”
He thrust them aside and scrambled anyhow to his feet, and struck instinctively with his left full in the face of the nearest man who had sprung up also. But all his weight was then on his left foot and the flame of agony shot up through his thigh and his leg crumpled up before the blow reached the man. Then the one in the khaki slacks came in with an upper cut on the point of his jaw and he fell senseless.
When he recovered consciousness a few minutes afterwards, he found himself alone, dazed, rather sick, in an uncomprehended world of gathering darkness. Black clouds had swept over the brow of the quarry hill. A pattering noise some way off struck his ear. He realized it was rain on the road. He drew himself up to a sitting posture and in a moment or two recovered wits and memory. There had been a fight. There was one man in khaki slacks—why, that was the man who had asked him the time at four o’clock in the afternoon. He had lain in wait for him and robbed him of his watch and chain. What a fool he had been to parade it in this manner. Well, it was gone. It would teach him a lesson in prudence. But the other man? How did he come in? Why did they wait three or four hours before attacking him? Perhaps the man of the khaki slacks had struggled against temptation until a more desperate acquaintance came along. He remembered the landlord of the inn where he had lunched telling him of an ugly quarrying village he would pass through, a nest of out-of-works—owing to quarries, unprofitable at the high rate of wages, being closed down—living discontented Bolshevik lives on high out-of-work pay. He cursed his leg. If it had not failed him, he would have got home on the first man, as easily as shaking hands—the flabby, unguarded face shimmered in front of him; and then he could have turned his attention to the man in khaki slacks, a true loafer type, spiritless when alone—the kind of man, who, if he had worn those slacks in the army, would have been in guard-room every week, and would have cowered as a perpetual cleaner of latrines under the eyes of vitriol-tongued sergeants. Far from a fighting man. His imagination worked, almost pleasurably, in the reconstitution of the robbery. But for his abominable leg he would have downed both the degenerate scoundrels, and have recovered his precious belongings. He damned them and his leg impartially. The watch and chain were all that he had kept materially of Olivia. In the morning he had hesitated as to the advisability of carrying them with him, gold watches and chains not being customarily accoutrements of a common sailor in wind-jammer or tramp steamer fo’c’sle. But sentiment had prevailed. He could hide them somewhere, when he reached the port, and at convenient slop-shops he could have reorganized attire and equipment.
The rain pattering on the open road came dribbling through the branches of the pines. He cursed the rain. He must go on somewhere. Absurd to stay in the wood and get wet through. He struggled to his feet and then for the first time became aware of a looseness around his middle. He looked down. His trousers were unbuttoned, his shirt sagged out immodestly as if the front had been hurriedly tucked in. His hands sought his waist. The belt with all the money he had in the world had gone.