I am tired of you. I have been patient with
you for years. You are sheep; are you fools also, to be dazzled by the
words of an idle talker who promises all and gives nothing?"
There was a sullen silence. Paul had lost his power over them, and he
knew it. He was quite cool and watchful. He knew that he was in danger.
These men were wild and ignorant. They were mad with drink and the brave
words of the agitator.
"Choose now!" he shouted, feeling for the handle of the door behind his
back.
They made no sign, but watched the faces of their leaders.
"If I go now," said Paul, "I never come again!"
He opened the door. The men whom he had nursed and clothed and fed,
whose lives he had saved again and again, stood sullen and silent.
Paul passed slowly out and closed the door behind him. Without it was
dark and still. There would be a moon presently, and in the meantime it
was preparing to freeze harder than ever.
Paul walked slowly up the village street, while two men emerged
separately from the darkness of by-lanes and followed him. He did not
heed them. He was not aware that the thermometer stood somewhere below
zero. He did not even trouble to draw on his fur gloves.
He felt like a man whose own dogs have turned against him. The place
that these peasants had occupied in his heart had been precisely that
vacancy which is filled by dogs and horses in the hearts of many men.
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