“Where did ye kill, Steeve?” asked a dispirited voice.

“We didn’t kill at all:  he was one of those “longshore dog-foxes, and got away home on the cliff.”  Stephen thumped his knee.  “It’s my belief the smell o’ sea gives ’em extra cunning.”

“The beggar seems to have put ye out rether—­eh, Steeve?”

So it was generally presumed:  and yet the charge of madness was very staggering; madness being, in the first place, indefensible, and everybody’s enemy when at large; and Robert’s behaviour looked extremely like it.  It had already been as a black shadow haunting enthusiastic minds in the village, and there fell a short silence, during which Stephen made his preparations for filling and lighting a pipe.

“Come; how do you make out he’s mad?”

Jolly Butcher Billing spoke; but with none of the irony of confidence.

“Oh!” Stephen merely clapped both elbows against his sides.

Several pairs of eyes were studying him.  He glanced over them in turn, and commenced leisurely the puff contemplative.

“Don’t happen to have a grudge of e’er a kind against old Bob, Steeve?”

“Not I!”

Mrs. Boulby herself brought his glass to Stephen, and, retreating, left the parlour-door open.

“What causes you for to think him mad, Steeve?”

A second “Oh!” as from the heights dominating argument, sounded from Stephen’s throat, half like a grunt.  This time he condescended to add,—­

“How do you know when a dog’s gone mad?  Well, Robert Eccles, he’s gone in like manner.  If you don’t judge a man by his actions, you’ve got no means of reckoning.  He comes and attacks gentlemen, and swears he’ll go on doing it.”

“Well, and what does that prove?” said jolly Butcher Billing.

Mr. William Moody, boatbuilder, a liver-complexioned citizen, undertook to reply.

“What does that prove?  What does that prove when the midshipmite was found with his head in the mixedpickle jar?  It proved that his head was lean, and t’ other part was rounder.”

The illustration appeared forcible, but not direct, and nothing more was understood from it than that Moody, and two or three others who had been struck by the image of the infatuated young naval officer, were going over to the enemy.  The stamp of madness upon Robert’s acts certainly saved perplexity, and was the easiest side of the argument.  By this time Stephen had finished his glass, and the effect was seen.

“Hang it!” he exclaimed, “I don’t agree he deserves shooting.  And he may have had harm done to him.  In that case, let him fight.  And I say, too, let the gentleman give him satisfaction.”

“Hear! hear!” cried several.

“And if the gentleman refuse to give him satisfaction in a fair stand-up fight, I say he ain’t a gentleman, and deserves to be treated as such.  My objection’s personal.  I don’t like any man who spoils sport, and ne’er a rascally vulpeci’ spoils sport as he do, since he’s been down in our parts again.  I’ll take another brimmer, Mrs. Boulby.”