Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/282

 heaven, and said for the last time in that struggle, “It isn’t my affair!”

And so saying he turned his face towards the Potwell Inn.

He went back neither halting nor hastening in his pace after this last decision, but with a mind feverishly busy.

“If I get killed, I get killed, and if he gets killed I get hung. Don’t seem just somehow.

“Don’t suppose I shall frighten him off.”

The private war between Mr. Polly and Uncle Jim for the possession of the Potwell Inn fell naturally into three chief campaigns. There was first of all the great campaign which ended in the triumphant eviction of Uncle Jim from the inn premises, there came next after a brief interval the futile invasions of the premises by Uncle Jim that culminated in the Battle of the Dead Eel, and after some months of involuntary truce there was the last supreme conflict of the Night Surprise. Each of these campaigns merits a section to itself.

Mr. Polly re-entered the inn discreetly. He found the plump woman seated in her bar, her eyes a-stare, her face white and wet with tears. “O God!” she was saying over and over again. “O God!” The air was full of a spirituous reek, and on the sanded boards in