Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/381

 Now, if there was one thing more than another upon which the doctor had dwelt in his conversation with me, it was upon the essential law-abidingness, not to say gentleness, of his much-misrepresented country. And yet (truly, it may have been no more than a button that irked him) I saw his hand travel backwards to his right hip, clutch at something, and come away empty.

"He won't kill you," I said. "He 'll probably sue you in court, if I know my own people. Better give him some money from time to time." "If he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work," the doctor answered, "I 'm all right. If he does n't . . . my name is Emory—Julian B. Emory—193 'Steenth Street, corner of Madison and—"

"I feel worse than I 've ever felt," said the navvy, with suddenness. "What—did—you—give—me—the—drink—for?"

The matter seemed to be so purely personal that I withdrew to a strategic position on the overhead bridge, and, abiding in the exact centre, looked on from afar.

I could see the white road that ran across the shoulder of Salisbury Plain, unshaded for mile after mile, and a dot in the middle distance, the back of the one porter returning to Framlynghame Admiral, if such a place existed, till seven forty-five. The bell of a church invisible clanked softly. There was a rustle in the horse-chestnuts to the left of the line, and the sound of sheep cropping close.

The peace of Nirvana lay upon the land, and, brooding in it, my elbow on the warm iron girder of the foot-bridge (it is a forty-shilling fine to cross by any other