"That'll do!" roared Vorski. "That'll do. Once more and for the last time . . . what do you want with me?"
"I'm sick of telling you. I am commissioned to hand you the God-Stone."
"Oh, hanged if I know! I've always been brought up to believe that some day a prince of Almain would appear at Sarek, one Vorski, who would slay his thirty victims and to whom I was to make an agreed signal when his thirtieth victim had breathed her last. Therefore, as I'm a slave to orders, I got together my little parcel, bought two Bengal lights at three francs seventy-five apiece at a hardware shop in Brest, _plus_ a few choice crackers, and, at the appointed hour, took up my perch in my observatory, taper in hand, all ready for work. When you started howling, in the top of the tree, 'She's dead! She's dead!' I thought that was the right moment, set fire to the lights and with my crackers shook the bowels of the earth. There! Now you know all about it."
Vorski stepped forward, with his fists raised to strike. That torrent of words, that imperturbable composure, that calm, bantering voice put him beside himself.
"Another word and I'll knock you down!" he cried. "I've had enough of it."
"Well, then you're my man. I have a God-Stone to hand you and I mean to hand it you, come what may. That's the sort of hairpin I am. You've got to pocket it, your miracle-stone."
"But I don't care a hang for the God-Stone!" roared Vorski, stamping his foot. "And I don't care a hang for you! I want nobody. The God-Stone! Why, I've got it, it's mine. I've got it on me."
"What do you call that?" said Vorski, taking from his pocket the little stone disk which he had found in the pommel of the sceptre.
"That?" asked the old man, with an air of surprise. "Where did you get that from?"
"From the pommel of this sceptre, when I unfastened it."
"A trouser-button with the shaft broken off, a button of the sort which the niggers in the Sahara wear. I've a whole set of them."
"To take the place of the precious stone which Maguennoc sneaked, the one which burnt him and obliged him to cut off his hand."
Vorski was silent. He was nonplussed. He had no notion what to do next or how to behave towards this strange adversary.
The ancient Druid went up to him and, gently, in a fatherly voice: