He knit his brows. “Possessed?” quoth he.
“Ay, possessed--possessed of devils. He has been violent. He has broken poor Rinolfo's leg.”
“Ah!” said Gervasio, and turned to me frowning with full tutorial sternness. “And what have you to say, Agostino?”
“Why, that I am sorry,” answered I, rebellious once more. “I had hoped to break his dirty neck.”
“You hear him!” cried my mother. “It is the end of the world, Gervasio. The boy is possessed, I say.”
“What was the cause of your quarrel?” quoth the friar, his manner still more stern.
“Quarrel?” quoth I, throwing back my head and snorting audibly. “I do not quarrel with Rinolfos. I chastise them when they are insolent or displease me. This one did both.”
He halted before me, erect and very stern--indeed almost threatening. And I began to grow afraid; for, after all, I had a kindness for Gervasio, and I would not willingly engage in a quarrel with him. Yet here I was determined to carry through this thing as I had begun it.
It was my mother who saved the situation.
“Alas!” she moaned, “there is wicked blood in him. He has the abominable pride that was the ruin and downfall of his father.”
Now that was not the way to make an ally of Fra Gervasio. It did the very opposite. It set him instantly on my side, in antagonism to the abuser of my father's memory, a memory which he, poor man, still secretly revered.
The sternness fell away from him. He looked at her and sighed. Then, with bowed head, and hands clasped behind him, he moved away from me a little.
“Do not let us judge rashly,” he said. “Perhaps Agostino received some provocation. Let us hear...”
“O, you shall hear,” she promised tearfully, exultant to prove him wrong. “You shall hear a yet worse abomination that was the cause of it.”
And out she poured the story that Rinolfo and his father had run to tell her--of how I had shown the fellow violence in the first instance because he had surprised me with Luisina in my arms.
The friar's face grew dark and grave as he listened. But ere she had quite done, unable longer to contain myself, I interrupted.
“In that he lied like the muckworm that he is,” I exclaimed. “And it increases my regrets that I did not break his neck as I intended.”
“He lied?” quoth she, her eyes wide open in amazement--not at the fact, but at the audacity of what she conceived my falsehood.