Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/112

 I'll chip in. You don't like me. But the sea will make a man of you and you'll thank me and we'll be friends."

"I dislike the sea intensely," said James.

"What do you like—the land—business? You've got to support your wife somehow."

"I'm not married yet, you know," said James. "If you knew a little more about the world . . . Why, that girl would be like a millstone around my neck."

James may have known a lot about the "world" but he knew very little about his brother. John stopped short, knocked the ashes from his pipe with deliberation and returned it to his pocket. Then he drew a deep breath, clenched his right fist and drove it with a sudden demoniac force and fury into that part of James's anatomy which, after the famous fight between Corbett and Fitzsimmons at Carson City, received a tremendous publicity under its rightful Latin name of solar plexus.

And for a long time thereafter, in the heart of Pelham Wood, James Eaton lay unconscious at the feet of his brother John.

The first words that James managed to speak were: "You dirty coward!" Then he struggled to a sitting position and was sick.

John refilled his pipe and lighted it and waited.