"I know what she wants--and it ain't you,
so cut your stick and leave 'er to the man who can comfort a fine,
'andsome lass."
Though addressing me, his eyes were for my companion, his loathsome
gaze never swerving from her prostrate form; very slowly and
deliberately he began to approach her, and now in the man himself, in
his every look and gesture there was an indescribable beastliness that
turned me physically sick. But none the less, though my soul shrank
within me, I ventured to grasp him by the sleeve.
"Let her alone--let her alone!" I gasped, dry-mouthed.
At this he turned on me, his evil face convulsed with a look of such
brutish ferocity as appalled me, yet I only tightened my grip more
desperately and repeated my passionate cry:
"Let her alone, I say; let her alone!"
Snarling inarticulately he leapt, striking at me with his bludgeon, a
cruel blow that staggered and dazed me, sapping alike my strength and
fortitude for, beholding the murderous glare of his eyes as he made to
smite again, blind panic seized me and, reeling aside, I sped away on
stumbling feet, my head throbbing with the blow,--deafened, sick and
half-blind. But all at once I stopped, suddenly oblivious of self as,
louder than the buzzing torment of my wounded head, rose a distressful
cry and the more hateful sound of desperate struggling. Round I turned
and, peering, saw them locked in close grapple, and her slender body
bent and swaying in his merciless clutch: at which sight my pain and
sickness and selfish fear were all forgotten and in their stead sprang
a passionate desire to kill and be done with this evil thing that
defiled the earth in man's shape.
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