“Ah! yes, of course; I beg your pardon, really,” returned the Englishman. “But, Judge Danvers, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to take a look at your friend there. Did I hear you call him Montague?”
There was a strong expression of disgust on the lawyer’s face when Norton began, but it was now rapidly changing to one of intense curiosity if not of expectation.
That of Major Montague, however, had undergone an even more complete and rapid transformation.
He had even made a motion towards the door, without so much as grasping for the valise, but the assured presence of the “officer” in the outer room came crushingly upon him, and he sank back on his chair in a state of mind that was plainly too much for even the strength of the “old rye.”
Mr. Ashbel Norton walked slowly and steadily forward, looking straight in the face of the Major, and it instantly occurred to Judge Danvers that there was a decided resemblance to be traced between them, although the Englishman was somewhat the more slender and younger looking of the two.
The only remark the Judge made was, however, “Major Montague—Mr. Ashbel Norton,” as if he were formally introducing two gentlemen.
“Montague!” again repeated the latter. “Now, that’s very good indeed! Bob, you old sinner, have I found you at last? What have you done with Lydia’s child? Where are the papers? Montague, indeed! Judge Danvers, I’m more sorry and ashamed than I can tell you; but I am compelled to make you acquainted with my elder brother, Mr. Robert Norton, formerly a gentleman and a Major in the British army. What he is now you may perhaps know as well as I do.”
The most cowardly of all wild beasts, from a wolf down to a rat, will show fight when he is cornered, and the “Major” was, probably, never a physical poltroon.
Well was it, therefore, that Ashbel Norton had been an “Eton boy” and was a master of the art of self-defence. Well too, probably, that his graceless brother had no better weapon than his huge fist at his command.
Ashbel warded off very skilfully the half-dozen furious blows which were rained upon him, but without once “striking back,” and by that time there was a heavier hand than that of Judge Danvers could have been, upon the shoulder of the Major, and the “thud” of an officer’s “locust” was beginning to sound on his head and arms.