t saw him Royston had never changed his attitude.
He was leaning with his shoulder against the corner of rock round which
the path turned, standing half across it, so that no one could pass him
easily. The dense blue cloudlets of smoke kept rolling out from his lips
rapidly, but regularly, and his right hand twined itself perpetually in
the coils of his heavy brown mustache. That gesture, to those who knew
his temper well, was ever ominous of foul and stormy weather. He did not
reply immediately, but, taking the cigar from his mouth, began twisting
up the loose leaf in a slow, deliberative way. At last he said,

"You did that rather well this morning. How much did you expect to get
for it? My wife is liberal enough in her promises sometimes, when she
wants to make herself disagreeable, but she don't pay well. You might
have driven a better bargain by coming to me. I would have given you
more to have held your tongue." His tone was such as the other had never
heard him use--such as most people would be loth to employ toward the
meanest dependent. No description can do justice to the intensity of its
insolence; it made even Mr. Fullarton's torpid blood boil resentfully.

"How dare you address such words to me?" he cried out, trembling with
rage. "If it were not for my profession--"

"Stop!" the other broke in, rudely; "you need not trouble yourself to
repeat that stale clap-trap. You mean to say that, if I were not safe
from your profession, I should not have said so much. It isn't worth
while lying to yourself, and I have no time to trifle. The converse is
the truer way of putting it. You know better than I can tell you that,
if you had been unfrocked, you would never have ventured half what you
have done to day. You don't stir from hence till this is settled. Do you
suppose I'll allow my private affairs to be made, again, an occasion for
indulging your taste for theatricals?"

The chaplain flushed apoplectically. He just managed to stammer out,

"I will not remain another instant to listen to your blasphemous
insults. If you mean to prevent me from passing, I will return another
way."

Scornfully
He turned; but thrilled with priestly wrath, to feel
His sacred arm locked in a grasp of steel.

A bolder man might have got nervous, finding himself on a lonely
hill-side, face to face with such an adversary, reading, too, the savage
meaning of those murderous eyes. Remember that