"I am too much a man of one idea. I have imagination enough for a score of hands and ten stout bodies, and I have only a pair of hands and THIS!"
He paused and looked down at his protuberant chest and twisted trunk, and shrunken, bent legs, and enormous feet.
"I am a bad specimen of the work of Nature's journeyman, to put it as some one does, and I am abominably made--all except the head!"
He threw up his head and glanced around with scornful challenge in his eye.
The chest of a horse was within a hand's breadth of his shoulder. The horse's head was flung aloft. The horse snorting and quivering, and bearing back upon his haunches.
Leigh sprang aside and looked around. He was in the middle of Piccadilly at Hyde Park Corner. He had almost been ridden over by a group of equestrians.
The gentleman whose horse had nearly touched him, took off his hat and apologised.
"You stopped suddenly right under the horse's head," said the gentleman. "I am extremely sorry."
Leigh raised his stick to strike the head of the horse.
The rider pulled his horse sharply away and muttered something under his breath.
"Oh, Sir Julius," cried a voice in terror, "it's Mr. Leigh!"
The dwarf's stick fell from his hand. "God's mercy in Heaven!" he cried in a whisper, as he took off his hat slowly, "Miss Ashton!"
Then, bareheaded and without his stick, he went up to the side of her horse, and said in a hoarse whisper, "I will have nothing to do with that Miracle Gold!"
A groom who had dismounted handed him his stick, and putting on his hat, he hastened away through the crowd which had begun to gather, leaving Dora in a state of mingled alarm and pity.
"Is he mad?" said Sir Julius Whinfield as the dwarf disappeared and the equestrians moved on.
"I'm sure I don't know. I think not. For a moment he terrified me, and now he breaks my heart!"
"Oh, he ought not to be human! There surely can be no woe like his!"
Dora Ashton was greatly shocked and distressed by the peril of Oscar Leigh and his subsequent behaviour.
"I am sure, Miss Ashton, I hope you will not imagine for a moment either that I was riding carelessly or that I recognised Mr. Leigh until you spoke. I saw him plainly enough as he was crossing the road. He was not minding in the least where he was going. He would have got across us in good time if he had only kept on; but he pulled up suddenly right under my horse's nose. I am sure I was more frightened than he. By Jove! how he glared at me. I think he would have killed me there and then if he could. He was going to strike my horse with that dreadful bludgeon of his. I am sure I was much more frightened than he was," said Sir Julius, in a penitential tone of voice, as the two rode on side by side.