They were sitting in a sort of litter on the hillside; all the things they had hurriedly collected, in various places, for their flight, were strewn indiscriminately round them.  The two swords with which they had lately sought each other’s lives were flung down on the grass at random, like two idle walking-sticks.  Some provisions they had bought last night, at a low public house, in case of undefined contingencies, were tossed about like the materials of an ordinary picnic, here a basket of chocolate, and there a bottle of wine.  And to add to the disorder finally, there were strewn on top of everything, the most disorderly of modern things, newspapers, and more newspapers, and yet again newspapers, the ministers of the modern anarchy.  Turnbull picked up one of them drearily, and took out a pipe.

“There’s a lot about us,” he said.  “Do you mind if I light up?”

“Why should I mind?” asked MacIan.

Turnbull eyed with a certain studious interest, the man who did not understand any of the verbal courtesies; he lit his pipe and blew great clouds out of it.

“Yes,” he resumed.  “The matter on which you and I are engaged is at this moment really the best copy in England.  I am a journalist, and I know.  For the first time, perhaps, for many generations, the English are really more angry about a wrong thing done in England than they are about a wrong thing done in France.”

“It is not a wrong thing,” said MacIan.

Turnbull laughed.  “You seem unable to understand the ordinary use of the human language.  If I did not suspect that you were a genius, I should certainly know you were a blockhead.  I fancy we had better be getting along and collecting our baggage.”

And he jumped up and began shoving the luggage into his pockets, or strapping it on to his back.  As he thrust a tin of canned meat, anyhow, into his bursting side pocket, he said casually: 

“I only meant that you and I are the most prominent people in the English papers.”

“Well, what did you expect?” asked MacIan, opening his great grave blue eyes.

“The papers are full of us,” said Turnbull, stooping to pick up one of the swords.

MacIan stooped and picked up the other.

“Yes,” he said, in his simple way.  “I have read what they have to say.  But they don’t seem to understand the point.”

“The point of what?” asked Turnbull.

“The point of the sword,” said MacIan, violently, and planted the steel point in the soil like a man planting a tree.

“That is a point,” said Turnbull, grimly, “that we will discuss later.  Come along.”

Turnbull tied the last tin of biscuits desperately to himself with string; and then spoke, like a diver girt for plunging, short and sharp.