It
was strange to see them in that wide-stretching valley, whence
grey boar-backs of hills swelled up into the silence of the snow
--it was strange, I say, in that vast solitude, to see these two,
mere dots on its bosom, circling round one another in fierce
forgetfulness of the outside world, glaring and shifting their
ground like cocks about to engage, and wholly engrossed--by three
scraps of orange-colour, invisible at fifty paces!
At last the innkeeper cried with an oath, 'I am going back. This
must be known down yonder. Give me your pieces, man, and do you
go on with Antoine. It will be all right.'
But Clon, waving a scrap of the stuff in either hand, and
thrusting his ghastly mask into the other's face, shook his head
in passionate denial. He could not speak, but he made it as
clear as daylight that if anyone went back with the news, he was
the man to go.
'Nonsense!' the landlord rejoined fiercely, 'We cannot leave
Antoine to go on alone with him. Give me the stuff.'
But Clon would not. He had no thought of resigning the credit of
the discovery; and I began to think that the two would really
come to blows.
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