But a stone, as I learnt in my
boyhood--a stone, sirs, and _a fortiori_ a bullet--"
"Hist!" broke in my father, at the same moment reining up.
"Prosper, what do you make of that noise, up yonder?"
I listened. "It sounds to me like a heavy cart--"
"Or a waggon. To my hearing there are two horses."
"And runaway ones, by the shouting."
We had reached a point of the road, not far from home, where a steep
lane cut across it: a track seldom used but scored with old ruts,
sunk between hedges full sixteen feet high, leading down from a back
gate of Constantine and a deserted lodge to a quay by the waterside.
Not once in three months, within my remembrance, did cart or waggon
pass along this lane, which indeed grew a fine crop of grass and
docks between the ruts.
"Nay," said my father, after a few seconds, "I gave you a false
alarm, gentlemen. The shouting, whatever it means, is over.
Your pardon, Mr. Fett, that I interrupted you."
"Sir," said Mr. Fett, stepping put him to reconnoitre the lane,
"I was but remarking what a number of the wise have observed before
me, that a stone which has left the hand is in the hands of the
dev--"
He ducked his head with a cry as a stone whizzed past him and within
a foot of it.
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