'Get out of my barn!' he cried, and drove the
fork full at the intruder's chest. He had a vague idea that so he
might stab the man to silence. But the man shouted loudly as the prongs
pierced him and drove him backward, and instantly there was a sound of
feet running across the yard.
'Bombs,' cried the man upon the ground, struggling with the prongs in
his hand, and as Pestovitch staggered forward into view with the force
of his own thrust, he was shot through the body by one of the two
new-comers.
The man on the ground was badly hurt but plucky. 'Bombs,' he repeated,
and struggled up into a kneeling position and held his electric torch
full upon the face of the king. 'Shoot them,' he cried, coughing and
spitting blood, so that the halo of light round the king's head danced
about.
For a moment in that shivering circle of light the two men saw the king
kneeling up in the cart and Peter on the barn floor beside him. The old
fox looked at them sideways--snared, a white-faced evil thing. And then,
as with a faltering suicidal heroism, he leant forward over the bomb
before him, they fired together and shot him through the head.
The upper part of his face seemed to vanish.
'Shoot them,' cried the man who had been stabbed. 'Shoot them all!'
And then his light went out, and he rolled over with a groan at the feet
of his comrades.
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