forward, hooked his arm
around Muller's throat and, before he could close with him, with one
tremendous jerk managed not only to stop his wild career, but to
reverse the motion, and then, by interposing his foot with considerable
neatness, to land him--powerful as he was--on his back in a pool of
drainage that had collected from the stable in a hollow of the inn-yard.
Down he went with a splash, amid a shout of delight from the crowd,
who always like to see an aggressor laid low, his head bumping with
considerable force against the lintel of the door. For a moment he lay
still, and John was afraid that the man was really hurt. Presently,
however, he rose, and, without attempting any further hostile
demonstration or saying a single word, tramped off towards the house,
leaving his enemy to compose his ruffled nerves as best he could. Now
John, like most gentlemen, hated a row with all his heart, though he had
the Anglo-Saxon tendency to go through with it unflinchingly when once
it began. Indeed, the incident irritated him almost beyond bearing,
for he knew that the story with additions would go the round of
the countryside, and what is more, that he had made a powerful and
implacable enemy.

"This is all your fault, you drunken little blackguard!" he said,
turning savagely on the Tottie, who, now that his excitement had left
him, was snivelling and drivelling in an intoxicated fashion, and
calling him his preserver and his Baas in maudlin accents.

"He hit me, Baas; he hit me, and I did not take the forage. He is a bad
man, Baas Muller."

"Be off with you and get the horses inspanned; you are half-drunk," John
growled, and, having seen that operation advancing to a conclusion, he
went to the sitting-room of the hotel, where Bessie was waiting in happy
ignorance of the disturbance. It was not till they were well on their
homeward way that he told her what had passed, whereat, remembering the
scene she had herself gone through with Frank Muller, and the threats
that he had then made use of, she looked very grave. Her old uncle, too,
was very much put out when he heard the story on their arrival home that
evening.

"You have made an enemy, Niel," he said, as they sat upon the verandah
after breakfast on the following morning, "and a bad one. Not but what
you were right to stand up for the Hottentot. I would have done as much
myself had I been there and ten years younger, but Frank Muller is not
the man to forget being