"Well, and I'm glad I came to
Dunkirk. And so this was your business, was it? Halvers, I'm
thinking?"
"That is the business, sir," said James.
"Well, well," said Alan; and then in the same tone of childlike
interest, "it has naething to do with the Seahorse, then?" he
asked,
"With what?" says James.
"Or the lad that I have just kicked the bottom of behind yon
windmill?" pursued Alan. "Hut, man! have done with your lees! I
have Palliser's letter here in my pouch. You're by with it, James
More. You can never show your face again with dacent folk."
James was taken all aback with it. He stood a second, motionless
and white, then swelled with the living anger.
"Do you talk to me, you bastard?" he roared out.
"Ye glee'd swine!" cried Alan, and hit him a sounding buffet on the
mouth, and the next wink of time their blades clashed together.
At the first sound of the bare steel I instinctively leaped back
from the collision. The next I saw, James parried a thrust so
nearly that I thought him killed; and it lowed up in my mind that
this was the girl's father, and in a manner almost my own, and I
drew and ran in to sever them.
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