“Yes.”

“And you’re a sportsman?”

No answer.

“And a gentleman?”

In his speech for the prosecution counsel pointed out that the motive for the crime—­the one point in doubt—­had been established.  Joses had been a little too clever and had established it himself.  He had supplied the one missing link, and would be hung in a chain of his own making.  The two men had come to words and blows.  Joses, smarting alike in body and mind, had trotted home and, beside himself with rage and a desire for revenge, had committed this most insensate and abominable crime.

The jury found the prisoner guilty without leaving the box, and the judge, who described the crime as deliberate, malignant, and the work of a frustrated fiend, gave him a swinging sentence.

PART II

THE WOMAN AND THE HORSE

BOOK IV

THE TRIAL

CHAPTER XXIX

Albert Edward

Four years had passed; but Maudie had not changed or aged.

She lay in the sun on a step on the ladder, languid, insolent, concerned only for herself.  True the kennel beneath the ladder was empty now, and had a rusty and pathetic air as of long disuse; but the Monster-without-Manners was not dead, alas!—­he had but changed his abode.  Now and for some years past the Great Unspeakable had shared a kennel with the Four-Legs-Who-Might-Not-Walk-Alone; the one who there was all this foolish fuss about.  There were many such Four-Legs about, each as a rule with a small Two-Legs in attendance or on top.  As a whole, they were harmless.  They lived and let live, and Maudie asked no more.  But the Four-Legs with whom the Monster-without-Manners had entered on a sinister intimacy had been corrupted by his companion.  He bounded, too, upon occasion.  And when he bounded he was so big that he seemed to fill the yard, sprawling here and there and everywhere, till the walls bulged and burst, to the grave inconvenience of Maudie, the fan-tails, and all sober citizens; while the Monster-without-Manners more suo, encouraged him with coarse laughter.

When the Four-Legs-Who-Might-Not-Walk-Alone bounded in the yard, Maudie retired indignantly and with the grand air to safety in the loft.  She did not blame the Four-Legs.  He was young, innocent, and the victim of the impossible M.-w.-M., who was still the villain of her piece and had not altered for the better with the years.  Maybe he bounded less; but on the other hand age had brought with it cunning.

When Putnam’s Only Gentleman had brought her a saucer of milk the M.-w.-M. would approach with a great air of gallantry and high breeding, and deliberately thrusting his great foot into the saucer, would upset it.  That was what the M.-w.-M. thought a joke.