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A second more, and it would have been buried to the handle in the right arm which, quick as lightning, the bargee raised to shield his face, when Brogten's arm was seized from behind by Lillyston, who wrested the knife from him, and pitched it into the river. Brogten turned round, still unconscious what he was about. Julian stood nearest him, and he thought it was Julian who had disarmed him.
Julian, too, had been brooding on the events of the day, and fanning every now and then into fierce bursts of flame the dying embers of his morning's indignation. He took the worst view, and had every reason to take the worst view, of Brogten's intentions. He had received at his hands many wrongs, and an incivility as unvarying as it was undeserved.
"I see no fly," said De Vayne, glancing at it, and immediately draining it, with the intention of saying something to smooth Kennedy's feelings, which he supposed would have been hurt by Brogten's want of common politeness. "I think it very " Why did his words fail, and what was the reason of that scared look with which he regarded the blank faces of the other undergraduates?
Julian lifted the latch inside, and Lillyston saw with surprise and pain his scared and wild glance. Julian said not a word, but rushed past his friend, and burst furiously into Brogten's room. Fortunately Brogten was not in, for the moment he heard steps approaching, he had purposely gone out; but Lillyston followed Julian, and said "Come, this is folly, Julian; you have not a moment to lose.
"I think I must go just this one evening. I like to see a variety of men; one learns something from it." Kennedy went. The supper took place in Brogten's rooms, and the party then adjourned to Bruce's, where they immediately began a game at whist for half-a-crown points, and then "unlimited loo." Kennedy was induced to play "just to see what it was like."
Yet it was part of Brogten's punishment in after days to remember that his hand had set the stone moving on the steep hill-side, which afterwards he had no power to stay.
Without stopping to hear a word without catching the gentler tone of Brogten's rough voice without noticing his downcast expression of countenance Julian sprang up, assumed that Brogten had come to ridicule or even insult him, glared at him, clenched his teeth, and then seizing De Vayne's riding-whip, laid it without mercy about Brogten's shoulders.
Yet Brogten's Harton education, idle as he had been, sufficed to make him see that he was sinking lower and lower, not only in the world's estimation, but in his own.
Instantly swinging round, he gave Lord Fitzurse a butt with his elbow, which sent his lordship tottering into the ditch on the other side, and while his wrath was still blazing, received in one eye a blow from Brogten's strong fist, which for an instant made him reel. But it was only for an instant, and then he repaid Brogten with a cuff which felled him to the ground. Brogten was mad with fury.
What fearful hurt Julian might have received from so heavy a weapon in so powerful a hand, or how far Brogten's fury might have transported him, none can tell; but at that very moment he heard a step on the stairs, which arrested his violence, and the moment after Lillyston entered. "What!" said Lillyston indignantly, as he caught the almost diabolical expression of Brogten's face.
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