“ I’ll stimulate you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t like to mess up your plans, you know. But I might—out of sheer funk and misery.”
“You’d better not,” said the voice, with quiet emphasis.
“I wish I was dead,” said Marvel.
“It ain’t justice,” he said; “you must admit. … It seems to me I’ve a perfect right—”
“ Get on!” said the voice.
Mr. Marvel mended his pace, and for a time they went in silence again.
“It’s devilish hard,” said Mr. Marvel.
This was quite ineffectual. He tried another tack.
“What do I make by it?” he began again in a tone of unendurable wrong.
“Oh! shut up! ” said the voice, with sudden amazing vigour. “I’ll see to you all right. You do what you’re told. You’ll do it all right. You’re a fool and all that, but you’ll do—”
“I tell you, sir, I’m not the man for it. Respectfully—but it is so—”
“If you don’t shut up I shall twist your wrist again,” said the invisible man. “I want to think.”
Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees, and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. “I shall keep my hand on your shoulder,” said the voice, “all through the village. Go