"My God!" he muttered--"I nearly struck you!"
Leveson drew a long breath of relief, and sneaked backward on his heels.
"You--you're a nice kind of 'ordained Christian minister' aren't you?" he spluttered--"With all your humbug and cant you're no better than a vulgar bully! A vulgar bully!--that's what you are! I'll report you to the Bishop--see if I don't!--brow-beating me, and putting me in bodily fear, all about a woman too! Great Scott!--a fine scandal you'll make in the Church one of these days if you're not watched pretty closely and pulled up pretty sharply--and pulled up you shall be, take my word for it! We've had about enough of your high-and-mighty airs--it's time you learned to know your place---"
The words had scarcely left his mouth when a pair of long muscular arms seized him by the shoulders, shook him briefly and emphatically, and turning him easily over, deposited him flat in the dust.
"It is time--yea verily!--it is full time you learned to know your place!" said Julian Adderley, calmly standing with legs-astride across his fat recumbent body--"And there it is--and there you are! My dear Walden, how are you? Excuse my shaking hands with you-- having defiled myself, as the Orientals say, by touching unclean meat, I must wash first!"
For a moment Walden had been so taken aback by the suddenness of Leveson's unexpected overthrow that he could scarcely realise what had happened,--but presently when the Reverend 'Putty's' cobby legs began to sprawl uneasily on the ground, and the Eeverend 'Putty' himself gave vent to sundry blasphemous oaths and curses, he grasped the full humour of the situation. A broad smile lit up his face.
"That was a master-stroke, Adderley!" he said, and the smile deepened into sudden laughter--"But how in the world did you come here?"
"I was here all the time,"--said Adderley, still standing across Leveson's prostrate form--"Returning to the habits of primaeval monkey as I often do, I was seated in the boughs of that venerable chestnut-tree-and I heard all the argument. I enjoyed it. I was hoping to see the Church militant belabour the Church recusant. It would have been so new--so fresh! But as the sacred blow failed, the secular one was bound to fall. Don't get up, my excellent sir!-- don't, I beseech of you!" This to Leveson, who was trying by means of the most awkward contortions to rise to a sitting posture--"You will find it difficult--among other misfortunes your knickers will burst, and there is no tailor close at hand. Spare yourself,--and us!"