Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/150

134 shaped stones, dug out of the volcanic soil of the farm, and piled one on top of the other without any cement. Near the gate they were small, except the two lower rows, which were unusually large. After carefully removing one of them, without disturbing those immediately above it, the swagger dug a hole with his fingers in the ground where it had lain. This done he went for the purse, shuddering at the blood stains as he picked it up, and dropped it in the hollow he had prepared for it; afterwards putting the stone back in its place, and marking the spot with a stick.

Then, panic-stricken, he darted out of the gate, never once slackening his pace until he had put a good quarter of a mile between himself and the dead.

As he neared the town, houses became more and more frequent. He heard the laughter and shouts of merry children, and fragments of the conversation carried on at open windows, or on the creeper-entwined verandahs of the houses. But, like one half-asleep, he heard them as it were afar off. Tired and hungry he had but one thought to satisfy his craving for food; with a full pocket, a matter so simple that his face flushed and his blood flowed faster in his veins at the very thought.

When he had eaten he was another being. He was no longer a miserable creature, shrinking from observation like a whipped cur, but a man even as others are. He sat back in his chair at the public-house as if he had a spine and what was more a spine in good order. He even tried to look the world about him in the face, but that was beyond his powers, so he gave it up. To exert himself, physically or mentally, just then was impossible. He was, so to speak, pervaded by a glow, though his sensations were those of an old gentleman after his second glass of port rather than those of a swagger, who has just eaten his first square meal for a Rh