"What are YOU doing here? That's what _I_ have to ask. What foxy ferreting have you come down to Mambury for?"
"Foxy ferreting," Montague Nevitt repeated, drawing back as if stung, and profoundly astonished. "Why, what do you mean by that, Mr. Gildersleeve? I don't understand you." The home-thrust was too true--after the great cross-examiner's well-known bullying manner--not to pierce him to the quick. "Who dares to say I go anywhere ferreting?"
"_I_ do," Gilbert Gildersleeve answered, with assured confidence. "I say it, and I know it. You pitiful sneak, don't deny it to ME. You were in the vestry this morning looking up the registers. Even YOU, with your false eyes, sir, daren't look me in the face and tell me you weren't. I saw you there myself. And I know you found in the books what you wanted; for you paid the clerk an extravagant fee. ... What's that? you rat, don't try to interrupt me. Don't try to bully me. It never succeeds. Montague Nevitt, I tell you, I WON'T be bullied." And the great Q.C. put his foot down on the path with an elephantine solidity that made the prospect of bullying him seem tolerably unlikely. "I know the facts, and I'll stand no prevarication. Now, tell me, what vile use did you mean to make of your discovery this morning?"
Montague Nevitt drew back, fairly nonplussed for the moment by such a vigorous and unexpected attack on his flank. Resourceful as he was, even his cunning mind came wholly unprepared to this sudden cross-questioning. He felt his own physical inferiority to the big Q.C. more keenly just then than he could ever have conceived it possible for a man of his type to feel it. After all, mind doesn't always triumph over matter. Montague Nevitt was aware that that mountain of a man, with his six feet four of muscular humanity, fairly cowed and overawed him at such very close quarters.
"I don't see what business it is of yours, Mr. Gildersleeve," he murmured, in a somewhat apologetic voice. "I may surely be allowed to hunt up questions of pedigree, of service in the end to myself and my friends, without YOUR interference."
Gilbert Gildersleeve glared at him, and flared up all at once with righteous indignation.
"Of service in the end to yourself and your friends!" he cried, with unfeigned scorn, putting his own interpretation, as was natural, on the words. "Why, you cur! you reptile! you unblushing sneak! Do you mean to say openly you avow your intention of threatening and blackmailing me? here--alone--to my face! You extortionate wretch! I wouldn't have believed even YOU in your heart would descend to such meanness."