aying!"

His voice was loud. His partisans took up his cry. Nicanor found himself
surrounded. He became enraged; forgot that he himself with his wizard
tongue had worked them into a very fitting state for any outbreak. That
the emotions he had aroused should be turned against himself was a
monstrous thing. He drew his knife; one seized it from his hand and
flung it into the heart of the fire. Black figures danced around him; he
was lifted off his feet by their rush; flung down, trampled upon,
bruised, kicked, beaten. Men, losing all thought of him, fought over his
head, clamoring old pagan creeds and shrieking aloud their theories
concerning the Seven Mysteries of the Church. They differed wildly. From
the criticism of a romantic tale, the discussion flamed into a religious
war.

One with a broken head fell senseless near Nicanor. He, in scarcely
better case, turned and squirmed until he got himself covered with the
body; so saved his ribs and perhaps his life.

The combat ended, after a lapse of minutes, as abruptly as it had
started. A cry arose from the hurrying guardians of the flocks:

"The sheep! Look to the sheep! They scatter!"

The animals, frightened by the uproar into panic, broke from their
cordon and bolted into the darkness. Religion was forgotten on the
instant; men in the act of giving a blow swung around and fled after
their property. Seeing this out of the tail of his eye, Nicanor crawled
from beneath the protecting body. He stood upright beside the deserted
fire, panting, glaring, his clothes in tatters. Blood flowed from his
nose, and from a cut upon his temple. He was a sorry sight. He lifted
his clenched fist and shook it at his vanishing assailants.

"By Christ His cross!" he swore, repeating Rag's oath, "after this I
shall make you believe what I tell you, though I say that your hell is
heaven and your heaven hell. You have bruised me, beaten me, because of
what? Something too high for your sodden brains to know! You have
flouted me; now I shall flout you. I shall make you fear me, tremble at
my words--ay, kiss the very ground beneath my feet. You shall learn to
fear me and my power; you shall cringe like the curs you are!"

He went home in a quiver of rage and hate and shame, wounded in his
body, still more sorely in his dignity, and told his mother he was going
away. Where, he did not know. This was a small detail, since to him all
the world was new. Folk had faith in the manifestations