ted to make me drunk
that night, and who informed against me next day. It was you, you sly,
sneaking scamp!--deny it if you dare? If it comes to character who's
got the better one, you or I? No man can throw a dirty, dishonest
trick at me! And you! Who squares the corn-merchant? Who cooks every
bill that goes into the Court? Don't I know it? Have I lived nearly a
year under the same roof that covered you, without finding out pretty
well how you've managed to feather your nest so as to make it fine
enough for the pretty bird you've caught; and if I'd chosen to round on
you when you got me turned out, where would you be now, I'd like to
know? You would not be coachman at the Court."

Dixon had turned livid with rage, but kept his head.

"You are a poor, drunken fool, and don't know what you are saying, or
I'd make you swallow your words."

"You wouldn't! I could prove them!" went on Tom, choking with passion.
"And as you've cheated in work, you've cheated in love. You've cheated
me, and you've cheated that one as followed you sobbing and crying from
the place where you last came from, and who you'd promised faithful to
marry, and who you'd walked with for three years and more. I had the
story from the woman where I lodge. The girl spent the night there,
and she was pretty nigh broken-hearted. She'd even got her
wedding-gown."

Dixon sprang across the road like a tiger, and gave Tom such a swinging
box on the ear that, for a moment, he reeled again. And then, all the
devil in Tom was loosed, and he leaped on his foe, gripping him by the
throat until every vein in his forehead stood out in blue knots. The
action was so unexpected and so rapid that Dixon found it impossible to
free himself. The men swayed to and fro in each other's embrace,
finally falling heavily together with a sickening thud upon the road.
Tom was uppermost, and picked himself up with a rather ghastly smile,
but Dixon lay there rigid and motionless.

"Get up!" said Tom, poking him with the toe of his boot. "You won't be
so ready to interfere with me another time." But Dixon did not stir.

Rose, who had tried to stop the quarrel by every artifice in her power,
knelt down by the side of her lover. And suddenly a cry so shrill, so
despairing, broke the air, that Tom's heart stood still and the blood
froze in his veins.

"Tom! Tom!--you wicked man, you've killed him!" she shrieked.

And Tom, sobered by the cry, and realizing in a