But little Wilkins did not forget,
and he was not the kind of man to be pounded with impunity. He had in
his pocket a hunting knife, with which he could kill a hog--or a
man. When Robinson called him a skunk he felt in his pocket for the
knife, and put his thumb on the spring at the back of the buckhorn
handle, playing with it gently. It was not a British Brummagem
article, made for the foreign or colonial market, but a genuine
weapon that could be relied on at a pinch.
"Oh, I dare say you were a great man at home, weren't you?" he said.
"A lord maybe, or a landlord. But we don't have sich great men here,
and I am as good a man as you any day, skunk though I be."
Robinson had just thrown another shovelful of charcoal into the
furnace under his boiler, and he held up his shovel as if ready to
strike Williams, but it was never known whether he really intended to
strike or not.
The three other men standing near were quite amused with the dispute
of the two Englishmen, and were smiling pleasantly at their
foolishness. But little Wilkins did not smile, nor did he wait for
the shovel to come down on his head; he darted under it with his open
knife in the same manner as the Roman soldier went underneath the
dense spears of the Pyrrhic phalanx, and set to work. Robinson tried
to parry the blows with the handle of the shovel, but he made only a
poor fight; the knife was driven to the hilt into his body seven
times, then he threw down his shovel, and tried to save himself
behind the boiler, but it was too late; the dispute about England and
the States was settled.
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