The fellow’s face was livid: his eyes like swords. For a moment he stood trembling, with fists clenched. Then he seemed to think better of his valour and, clapping his hands behind him, threw himself back with a jerk against the spare wheel. “And now you’re out for blood?” he burst out presently. I knocked out my pipe. “Some years ago,” I said. “I was in Macedonia. Up in the mountains, I remember, there was an old churchyard, quite full of graves.” I looked about me. “The place was not unlike this. . . . And every grave had been opened—to release the spirits of the dead. It was a local superstition. Now, what do you think lived _and grew fat_. . . . in that churchyard?” There was a long silence. At length I leaned forward. “Snakes, Perowne, snakes. Snakes that traded on devotion . . . turned piteous piety to their own ends . . . used women’s love for their husbands to fill their bellies . . . battened upon the dead . . . And you ask if I’m out for blood. What do you think?” “Think?” said he. “Why, I think you’re very confident.” “I confess it,” said I. “I’m a poacher to-day. But you should watch your preserves.” He stared at the edge of the road and into the depths beyond. Then he tilted his chin and scanned the grandeur of Navarre—all mountains and sudden valleys and again mountains like footstools to mountains greater than they, so that the world seemed nothing but a black sea of breakers foam-crested, petrified. “You’re sore, of course,” he mused. “It’s a way relicts have. . . . But why have you left it so long?” “I thought she was happy,” I said. “It never occurred to me that the man was born who could treat such a lady ill. But it seems you struck her, Perowne.” He cried out at that, but the blood was in my head and I shouted him down. “More,” I raved, “more. You jeered at her grief . . . . . . mocked at her misery . . . twisted those delicate arms . . . cursed her for weeping because it spoiled your sleep . . . bullied my dying girl . . . My God! My God!” I bowed my head and covered my eyes with my hands. “Don’t think she told me,” I muttered. “She never gave you away. But——” As I lifted my head, the spare wheel caught me full in the face. I went down like a log, with the wheel on the top of me. I never remember feeling so shaken up. I wasn’t exactly unconscious but things were distorted—unreal. I saw Perowne seize a kit-bag and drop it into the ditch. I saw him slip into the car and I heard her start. I saw her begin to move . . . lurch . . . pitch to and fro. I saw the pitches grow longer—more pronounced. I began to get quite interested, wondering at every failure whether he’ld get her out at the next attempt. All the time his engine kept storming like an angry fiend. . . . Suddenly my brain cleared, and I realized that he was like to be gone and leave me sitting in the road with a wheel in my lap.