d
for one second at the sight of me.

"What!" said he. "Ain't afraid of them, are you?"

I glanced over my shoulder and back at him, was near showing him my
pistol, and the expression changed in his eyes. He hung perplexed
at me. Then with a grunt he went on.

I heard the voices growing loud and sharp behind me.

I hesitated, half turned towards the dispute, then set off running
towards the heaps. Some instinct told me not to be detected loading.
I was cool enough therefore to think of the aftermath of the thing
I meant to do.

I looked back once again towards the swaying discussion--or was
it a fight now? and then I dropped into the hollow, knelt among
the weeds, and loaded with eager trembling fingers. I loaded one
chamber, got up and went back a dozen paces, thought of possibilities,
vacillated, returned and loaded all the others. I did it slowly
because I felt a little clumsy, and at the end came a moment of
inspection--had I forgotten any thing? And then for a few seconds
I crouched before I rose, resisting the first gust of reaction
against my impulse. I took thought, and for a moment that great
green-white meteor overhead swam back into my conscious mind. For
the first time then I linked it clearly with all the fierce violence
that had crept into human life. I joined up that with what I meant
to do. I was going to shoot young Verrall as it were under the
benediction of that green glare.

But about Nettie?

I found it impossible to think out that obvious complication.

I came up over the heap again, and walked slowly back towards the
wrangle.

Of course I had to kill him. . . .

Now I would have you believe I did not want to murder young Verrall
at all at that particular time. I had not pictured such circumstances
as these, I had never thought of him in connection with Lord Redcar
and our black industrial world. He was in that distant other world
of Checkshill, the world of parks and gardens, the world of sunlit
emotions and Nettie. His appearance here was disconcerting. I was
taken by surprise. I was too tired and hungry to think clearly, and
the hard implication of our antagonism prevailed with me. In the
tumult of my passed emotions I had thought constantly of conflicts,
confrontations, deeds of violence, and now the memory of these things
took possession of me as though they were irrevocable resolutions.

There was a sharp exclamation, the shriek of a woman, and the crowd
came surging back. The