"I promised Anthy's father I'd look after her, an' I wull."

"But, Fergus, what have you got against me? I thought we were friends."

"What's friendship to do wi' it? Ye ain't good enough for Anthy: an' I wull na' ha' ye breakin' her heart. Who are ye that ye should be lookin'

upon a girl like that?"

Fergus's voice was shaking with emotion.

"Well, I know I'm not good enough, Fergus, you're right about that. No one is, I think. But I--I love her, Fergus."

"Ye love her: ye think ye do: next week ye'll think ye don't."

At this a flame of swift anger swept over Nort.

"If I love her and she loves me, who else has got anything to say about it I'd like to know?"

"Wull, I have," said Fergus grimly.

Nort laughed, a nervous, fevered laugh, and threw out his arms in a gesture of impatience.

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Go away," said Fergus, "go away and let her alone. Go back whur ye come from, an' break no hearts."

Although the words were gruff and short, there was a world of pleading in them, too. Fergus had no desire to hurt Nort, but he wanted to get him away forever from Hempfield. It was only Anthy that he had in mind.

He must save Anthy. Nort felt this note of appeal, and answered in kind:

"I can't do it, Fergus, and you have no right to ask me. If Anthy tells me to go, I will go. It is between us. Can't you see it?"

"Wull," said Fergus, hopelessly, "you an' me must ha' it oot."

With this, Fergus turned about and began to take off his coat. Nort remembered long afterward the look of Fergus deliberately taking off his coat--his angular, bony form, his wiry, freckled neck, his rough, red hair, his loose sleeves held up by gayly embroidered armlets, the trousers bagging in extremity at his knees. Even in that moment he felt a curious deep sense of pity, pity mingled with understanding, sweep over him. He had come some distance in the few short hours since Anthy's face had looked up into his.

Fergus laid his coat and hat at the trunk of a beech tree and began slowly to roll up his sleeves.

"Will ye fight wi' yer coat on or off?"

Nort suddenly laughed aloud. It was unbelievable, ridiculous! Why, it was uncivilized! It simply wasn't done in the world he had known.

Nort had never in his life been held down to an irrevocable law or principle, never been confronted by an unescapable fact of life. Some men go through their whole lives that way. He had never met anything from which there was not some easy, safe, pleasant, polite way out--his wit, his family connections, his money. But now he was looking into the implacable, steel-blue eyes of Fergus MacGregor.

"But, Fergus," he said, "I don't want to fight. I like you."

"There's them that _has_ to fight," responded Fergus.

"I never fought anybody in my life," said Nort, as though partly to himself.

"That may be the trouble wi' ye."

Fergus continued, like some implacable fate, getting ready. He was now hitching up his belt.

Every artistic nature sooner or later meets some such irretrievable human experience. It asks only to see life, to look on, to enjoy. But one day this artistic nature makes the astonishing discovery that nature plays no favourites, that life is, after all, horribly concrete, democratic, little given to polite discrimination, and it gets itself suddenly taken seriously, literally, and dragged by the heels into the grime and common coa.r.s.eness of things.

Nort was still inclined to argue, for it did not seem real to him.

"It won't prove anything, Fergus, fighting never does."

"'Fraid, are ye?"

"Yes," said Nort, "horribly."

And yet at the very moment that Nort was saying that he was horribly afraid, and he spoke the literal truth, a very strange procession of thoughts was pa.s.sing swiftly through the back of his mind. He was somehow standing aside and seeing himself as he was at that moment, seeing, indeed, every detail of the scene before him like a picture, every tree and leaf, the carpet of leaves and bracken, seeing Fergus moving about. Yes, and he was laughing, away back there, at the picture he saw, and wondering at it, and thrilling over it, at the very moment that he was so horribly afraid. He was even speculating, back there, a little cynically, whether he, Nort, would finally stay to fight or run away. He actually did not know!

Fergus's dull, direct, geologic mind could not possibly have imagined what was pa.s.sing nimbly behind those frightened, boyish blue eyes.

Fergus was moving straight ahead in the path he had planned, and, on the whole, placidly. What a blessing in this world is a reasonable amount of dulness!

Having prepared himself, Fergus now stepped forward. Nort stood perfectly still, his arms hanging slack at his sides, his face as pale as marble, his eyes widening as Fergus approached.

"I can't see any reason for fighting," he was saying. "Why should you fight me?"

"Wull, we needna fight--if ye'll go away."

For one immense moment Nort saw himself running away, and with an incredible inner sense of relief and comfort. He wanted to run, intended to run, but somehow he could not. He was afraid to fight, but somehow he was still more afraid to run. And then, with a blinding flash he thought of Anthy. What would she say if she saw him running?

At that moment Fergus struck him lightly on the cheek.

It was like an electric shock to Nort. He stiffened in every muscle, red flashes pa.s.sed before his eyes, his throat twisted hard and dry, and the tears came up to his eyes. In another moment he was grappling with Fergus, striking wildly, blindly. And he was, curiously, no longer confused. An incredible clearness of purpose swept over him. This purpose was to _kill_ Fergus. There was to be no longer any foolery about it; he was going to kill him.

If Fergus had known what Nort was thinking at that moment he would have been horrified and shocked beyond measure. Fergus had not the most distant intent of injuring Nort seriously. He did not even hate him, but, I fully believe, really loved him, and was going through this disagreeable business quite coldly. As he received Nort's impetuous a.s.sault, he smiled with a sort of high exultation and found words to remark:

"The mair haste, Nort, the waur speed."

With that he hit out squarely with his wiry, muscular arm--just once--and Nort went down in the bracken and lay quite still.

Fergus stood looking down at him: the silent face upturned, very white, very boyish, very beautiful, the soft hair tumbling about his temples, the lax arms spread out among the leaves. And all around the still woods, and quiet fields, and the robins singing, and the sun coming up over the hill.

As Fergus looked down his breast began to heave and the tears came into his eyes.

"The bonnie, bonnie lad," he said; "he wadna run awa'."

Presently Nort stirred uneasily.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Come, now," said Fergus tenderly, "we'll get down ta the brook."

With one arm around him, Fergus helped him through the woods, and knelt beside him while he dashed the cold water over his face and head.

"I hit ye hard," said Fergus, "and it's likely yer eye'll be blackened."