Alpha Book

It was very quiet here, save for the occasional jangle of the cow-bells
and the far-off fifing of frogs in the marsh below.
"It would have been impossible, of course," said Colonel Musgrave, "for
me to have offered you any personal violence as long as you were, in a
manner, a guest of mine. This field, however, is the property of Judge
Willoughby, and here I feel at liberty to thrash you."
Then he thrashed the man who had annoyed Patricia Stapylton.
That thrashing was, in its way, a masterpiece. There was a certain
conscientiousness about it, a certain thoroughness of execution--a
certain plodding and painstaking carefulness, in a word, such as is
possible only to those who have spent years in guiding fat-witted
tourists among the antiquities of the Lichfield Historical Association.
"You ought to exercise more," Rudolph Musgrave admonished his victim,
when he had ended. "You are entirely too flabby now, you know. That path
yonder will take you to the hotel, where, I imagine, you are staying.


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