“Sir,” said Dale earnestly, “I do assure you I am not a bully, nor one who is always losing his temper.”

“Yet you gave me the impression of irascibility just now, when I drew you.”

Dale inwardly cursed his stupidity in having allowed himself to be drawn.  He had made a mistake that might prove fatal.  He felt that the whole point of the affair was being lost sight of; they seemed to have drifted away into a discussion of good and bad manners, while he wanted to get back to the great issue of right and wrong, justice or injustice.  And he understood the ever-increasing danger of being condemned on the minor count, with the cause itself, the great fundamental principle, remaining unweighed.

“No one,” he said, humbly but firmly, “regrets it more than I do, gentlemen, if I spoke up too hot.  But, sir,” and he bowed to Sir John, “you were wishing to nettle me, and there’s no question that for the moment I was nettled.”

All three judges smiled; and Dale, accepting the smiles as a happy augury, went on with greater confidence.

“I’m sure I apologize.  And I ask you not to turn it to more than its proper consequence—­or to make the conclusion that I’m that way as a rule.  With all respect, I’d ask you to think that this means a great deal to me—­a very great deal; and that it has dragged on until—­naturally—­it begins to prey on one’s mind.  I am like to that extent shaken and off my balance; but I beg, as no more than is due, gentlemen, that you won’t take me for quite the man up here, where all’s strange, to what I am down there, where I’m in my element and on my own ground.  And I would further submit, under the head of all parties at Rodhaven, that there may be a bit of malice behind their report.”

“What malice could there possibly be?  They appear to have shown an inclination to pass over the whole matter.”

“Only if I took a black mark, sir.  That’s where the shoe pinched with me, sir—­and perhaps with them too.  They mayn’t have been best pleased when I asked to have your decision over theirs.”

Then the Colonel spoke instead of Sir John.

“But apart from Rodhaven, we have evidence against you from the village.  Your neighbors, Mr. Dale, complain more forcibly than anybody else.”

“Is that so?” Dale felt as if he had received a wickedly violent blow in the dark.  “Of course,” and he moved his hands spasmodically—­“Of course I’ve long expected I’d enemies.”  Then he snorted.  “But I suppose, sir, you’re alluding now to a certain Member of Parliament whose name I needn’t mention.”

“Yes, I allude to him, and to others—­to several others.”

“If some have spoken against me, there’s a many more would have spoken for me.”

“But they have not done so,” said the Colonel dryly.

For a moment Dale’s mental distress was so acute that his ideas seemed to blend in one vast confused whirl.  Some answer was imperatively necessary, and no answer could evolve itself.  Hesitation would be interpreted as the sign of a guilty conscience.  And in this dreadful arrest of his faculties, the sense of bodily fatigue accentuated itself till it seemed that it would absolutely crush him.