Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/94

 spark that means, however translated and transmuted, primæval force. I never see a judge but I see underneath him palæolithic man with a stone-axe in his claw, working out revenges, and scattering brains with a blow. Even ermine is the skin of a wild beast.

I had the clue to Tom, for I knew his brother, and the others didn't. Jack Willett was as like Tom as a fresh pea is to a dried one, and sometimes it seemed to me that if Thomas Willett had had his brother's life it would have been difficult to know them apart. And Jack was curiously lawless—he could not stay in England a month without danger. As he said, with a quick glitter in his eye—people don't jostle one in Texas unless they're looking for death, and can face it smiling.

And one day he said: "Tom is as bad as myself underneath. Only he doesn't know it."

They were always together when Jack was in England, for Tom looked after him. With his arm locked in his brother's, he bade him remember that Law and Order were most respectable creatures, and formidable. And