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Updated: August 21, 2024
And, though the impact cut Brice's fingers afresh, the snake lay twisting wildly and harmlessly with a cloven spine. Over the writhing body sprang Gavin Brice and out into the sandy open, filling his smoke-tortured lungs with the fresh sunset air and blinking away the smoke-damp from his stinging eyes. It was then he beheld running toward him three men.
"Lawyer Brice's sons?" "Yes, of course." My imbecile's lips expanded into a broad grin. "Lawyer Brice never had no sons," he exclaimed, with a tone which seemed to express a contemptuous pity for my ignorance; "he never married." "Well, well; his brothers. He had brothers, I suppose?" "Not as I ever heard tell on," answered my imbecile, relapsing into hopeless inanity.
The Judge was shaven, save for a shaggy fringe of gray beard around his chin, and the size of his nose was apparent even in the full face. Stephen felt that no part of him escaped the search of Mr. Whipple's glance. But it was no code or course of conduct that kept him silent. Nor was it fear entirely. "So you are Appleton Brice's son," said the Judge, at last.
But instead of writing it clown, the man merely stared at him, while the fat creases in his face deepened and deepened. Finally he put down his quill, and indulged in a gale of laughter, hugely to Mr. Brice's discomfiture. "Shucks!" said the fat man, as soon as he could. "What are you givin' us? That the's a Yankee boa'din' house."
Before Brice could dodge out of his close-quarters position, the other clasped him tight in his bulgingly powerful arms, gripping the lighter man to his chest in a hug which had the gruesome force of a boa-constrictor's, and increasing the pressure with all his weight and mighty strength. There was no space for maneuvering or for wriggling free. Clear from the ground Brice's feet were swung.
The debonaire laziness was gone from Brice's voice and manner. His face was dead-white. His eyes were blazing. His mouth was a mere gash in the grim face. Even as he spoke, he had thrust the snarling collie away, and was at the beach-comber. No longer was it a question of boxing or of half-jesting horseplay. The use of the knife had put this fight on a new plane.
We have been able to learn nothing of Alfgar; but we think that Anlaf probably yet lives, and that he has recovered his son; yet we cannot imagine how he escaped on St. Brice's night. Well, to return. We at once set to work, and erected a church of timber, for the service of God; and I said mass in it the first Sunday after our arrival there.
Edmund has lost many men in the course of the last few months; and with the remainder he hid in our woods, ready to protect us "to the last breath," as he said, "in his body." But the enemy never discovered our retreat. Praise be to God for sparing this little Zoar! The saints are not unmindful how we protested against the iniquity of St. Brice's day.
And, the right sort of oblique push will not only throw him off his balance, but in such a direction that his second foot cannot come to earth in position to help him restore that balance. Under the skillfully gentle impact of Brice's shove, the man let go of the snarling collie and hopped insanely for a second or so, with arms outflung. Then he sat down ungracefully on the sand.
Then the words of the churl Beorn, who had been taken prisoner, as the messenger had told us, came fresh to my mind. "Elfwyn," said I, "do you remember Beorn?" He looked earnestly at me. "Did he not say that his captors asked particularly about Aescendune, and that the name of Anlaf was mentioned, and inquiries made concerning Alfgar?" "He did." "It is the curse of St. Brice's night."
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