Eh-so!"
He sat down, and, with his finger, wrote musingly in the dust upon the
table.
Liddall looked keenly at him, and replied more brusquely than he felt:
"Do you think it fair to stay--fair to her?"
"What if I should take her with me?" Pierre flashed a keen, searching
look after the words.
"It would be useless devilry."
"Let us drink," said Pierre, as he came to his feet quickly: "then for
the House of Lords" (the new and fashionable tavern).
They separated in the street, and Pierre went to the House of Lords
alone. He found a number of men gathered before a paper pasted on a
pillar of the veranda. Hearing his own name, he came nearer. A ranch
man was reading aloud an article from a newspaper printed two hundred
miles away. The article was headed, "A Villainous Plunderer." It had
been written by someone at Guidon Hill. All that was discreditable in
Pierre's life it set forth with rude clearness; he was credited with
nothing pardonable. In the crowd there were mutterings unmistakable to
Pierre. He suddenly came among them, caught a revolver from his pocket,
and shot over the reader's shoulder six times into the pasted strip of
newspaper.
The men dropped back. They were not prepared for warlike measures at
the moment. Pierre leaned his back against the pillar and waited. His
silence and coolness, together with an iron fierceness in his face, held
them from instant demonstration against him; but he knew that he must
face active peril soon.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69