“What right?” he stammered—­“Why—­why what do yon mean by flaring up in such a temper, eh?  What does it matter to you?”

“It matters this much,—­that I will not allow Miss Vaneourt to be insulted by you or anyone else!” retorted Walden, hotly—­“You have never spoken to her,—­you know nothing about her,—­so hold your tongue!”

The Reverend ‘Putty’s’ round eyes protruded with amazement.

“Hold—­my—­tongue!” he repeated, in a kind of stupefaction—­“Are you gone mad, Walden?  Do you know who you are talking to?”

John gave a short laugh.  His hands clenched involuntarily.

“Oh, I know well enough!” he said—­“I am talking to a man who has no more regard for a woman’s name than a cat has for the mouse it kills!  I am talking to a man who is an ordained Christian minister, who has less Christianity than a dog, which at least is faithful to its master!”

Leveson uttered a kind of inarticulate sound something between a gasp and a grunt.  Then he fell back on his old snigger.

“He-he, he-he-he!” he bleated—­“You must be crazy, Walden!—­or else you’ve been drinking!  I’ve a perfect right to speak of the Abbot’s Manor woman if I like and as I like!  All men have a right to do the same—­she’s been pretty well handed round as common property for a long time!  Why, she’s perfectly notorious!—­everybody knows that!”

“You lie!”

And Walden sprang at him, one powerful clenched fist uplifted.  Leveson staggered back in terror,—­and so for a moment they stood, staring upon one another.  They did not hear a stealthy rustle among the branches of the chestnut-tree near which they stood, nor see a long lithe shadow creep towards them for the dense low-hanging foliage.  Face to face, eye to eye, they remained for a moment’s space as though ready to close and wrestle,—­then suddenly Walden’s arm dropped to his side.

“My God!” he muttered—­“I nearly struck you!”

Leveson drew a long breath of relief, and sneaked backward on his heels.

“You—­you’re a nice kind of ‘ordained Christian minister’ aren’t you?” he spluttered—­“With all your humbug and cant you’re no better than a vulgar bully!  A vulgar bully!—­that’s what you are!  I’ll report you to the Bishop—­see if I don’t!—­brow-beating me, and putting me in bodily fear, all about a woman too!  Great Scott!—­a fine scandal you’ll make in the Church one of these days if you’re not watched pretty closely and pulled up pretty sharply—­and pulled up you shall be, take my word for it!  We’ve had about enough of your high-and-mighty airs—­it’s time you learned to know your place—–­”

The words had scarcely left his mouth when a pair of long muscular arms seized him by the shoulders, shook him briefly and emphatically, and turning him easily over, deposited him flat in the dust.

“It is time—­yea verily!—­it is full time you learned to know your place!” said Julian Adderley, calmly standing with legs-astride across his fat recumbent body—­“And there it is—­and there you are!  My dear Walden, how are you?  Excuse my shaking hands with you—­ having defiled myself, as the Orientals say, by touching unclean meat, I must wash first!”