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How now, coz, have I touched thee on the raw?"
Alleyne sat between them munching his bread, while the twain
disputed across his knees, leaning forward with flushed faces and
darting hands, in all the heat of argument. Never had he heard
such jargon of scholastic philosophy, such fine-drawn
distinctions, such cross-fire of major and minor, proposition,
syllogism, attack and refutation. Question clattered upon answer
like a sword on a buckler. The ancients, the fathers of the
Church, the moderns, the Scriptures, the Arabians, were each sent
hurtling against the other, while the rain still dripped and the
dark holly-leaves glistened with the moisture. At last the fat
man seemed to weary of it, for he set to work quietly upon his
meal, while his opponent, as proud as the rooster who is left
unchallenged upon the midden, crowed away in a last long burst of
quotation and deduction. Suddenly, however, his eyes dropped
upon his food, and he gave a howl of dismay.
"You double thief!" he cried, "you have eaten my herrings, and I
without bite or sup since morning.


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