d directly afterwards we became separated by a lot of
people pushing in. I stood back for a moment against the wall while the
stranger managed to get down the steps and disappeared. I saw Jim spin
round. He made a step forward and barred my way. We were alone; he
glared at me with an air of stubborn resolution. I became aware I was
being held up, so to speak, as if in a wood. The verandah was empty by
then, the noise and movement in court had ceased: a great silence fell
upon the building, in which, somewhere far within, an oriental voice
began to whine abjectly. The dog, in the very act of trying to sneak in
at the door, sat down hurriedly to hunt for fleas.

'"Did you speak to me?" asked Jim very low, and bending forward, not so
much towards me but at me, if you know what I mean. I said "No" at once.
Something in the sound of that quiet tone of his warned me to be on my
defence. I watched him. It was very much like a meeting in a wood, only
more uncertain in its issue, since he could possibly want neither my
money nor my life--nothing that I could simply give up or defend with
a clear conscience. "You say you didn't," he said, very sombre. "But I
heard." "Some mistake," I protested, utterly at a loss, and never taking
my eyes off him. To watch his face was like watching a darkening sky
before a clap of thunder, shade upon shade imperceptibly coming on, the
doom growing mysteriously intense in the calm of maturing violence.

'"As far as I know, I haven't opened my lips in your hearing," I
affirmed with perfect truth. I was getting a little angry, too, at the
absurdity of this encounter. It strikes me now I have never in my life
been so near a beating--I mean it literally; a beating with fists. I
suppose I had some hazy prescience of that eventuality being in the
air. Not that he was actively threatening me. On the contrary, he was
strangely passive--don't you know? but he was lowering, and, though not
exceptionally big, he looked generally fit to demolish a wall. The
most reassuring symptom I noticed was a kind of slow and ponderous
hesitation, which I took as a tribute to the evident sincerity of my
manner and of my tone. We faced each other. In the court the assault
case was proceeding. I caught the words: "Well--buffalo--stick--in the
greatness of my fear. . . ."

'"What did you mean by staring at me all the morning?" said Jim at last.
He looked up and looked down again. "Did you expect us all to sit with
downcast