Another shook his head, and muttered something about the Will o' God. A third said it was the sharp end of the branch that played hammock with her; he lost a cow once himself the same way. Old Kearney summed up for the group.
"There is no doubt in it, Miss Christian, my dear child--"
Christian leaned hard on Larry's shoulder as she rose to her feet.
"I'm going to get Carmody's gun," she said, beginning to walk away. "He had one. I saw it. I don't suppose he'll mind lending it to me."
There are illnesses that take possession of their victims slowly and quietly, with an imperceptible start, and a gradual crescendo of envelopment; others there are, that strike, sudden as a hawk, or a bullet. And this is true also of that other illness, the fever of the mind and heart that is called Love. An old song says, and says, for the most part, truly,
"I attempt from Love's sickness to fly in vain."
Larry Coppinger did not attempt to fly, even though he knew as precisely the moment when the fever struck him, as did Peter's wife's mother when her fever left her. Perhaps he might then have tried to escape; he knew it was too late now. That fatal rapturous moment had been when he saw Christian setting forth, a lonely, piteous figure, to fetch Carmody's gun. He had followed her, and his entreaties to her to let him deal with the matter had prevailed. She had turned back, and kneeling down again, kissed the white star on Nancy's forehead, murmuring something to her that Larry could not hear. He had put her saddle on his own horse; when he mounted her, she had stooped down from the tall horse's back, and had whispered: "'That thou hast to do, do quickly.'" He went over it all in his mind; that was all she had said, and he had not seen her since.
On that afternoon as he moved about the room he had chosen for his studio, and unpacked the monster cases he had brought from Paris, he remembered how, long ago, Mrs. Twomey had laughed at him when he told her he was never going to marry.
"Wait awhile!"' mocked Mrs. Twomey, "one day it'll sthrike ye all in the minute--the same as a pairson'd get a stitch when they'd be leaning-over a churn!"
Well, it had so struck him, and struck him hard, and he was reeling from the blow.