So he sat
down in his chair and finished his drink, and told me to blaze across at
him from where I sat in the other chair. I tried to get out of it,
partly because I seemed to have seen more good in Minchin in those last
ten minutes than in all the months that I had known him; he might be a
brute, but he was a British brute, and all right about fair play.
Besides, for the moment, it was difficult to believe he was serious, or
even very angry. But I, on my side, was more in a dream than not, or he
would not have managed me as he did. He broke out again, cursed me and
his wife, and swore that he would shoot her too if I didn't go through
with it. You can't think of the things he was saying when--but I
believe he said them on purpose to make me. Anyhow I pulled at last, but
there was only a click, and he answered with another like lightning.
That showed me how he meant it, plainer than anything else. It was too
late to get out. I set my teeth and pulled again ..."
"Like the clash of swords," whispered Langholm, in the pause.
Severino moved his head from side to side upon the pillow.
"No, not that time, Langholm. There was such a report as might have
roused the neighborhood--you would have thought--but I forgot to tell
you he had shut the window and run up some shutters, and even drawn the
curtains, to do for the other houses what the double doors did for his
own.
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