"Damn you!" said a voice almost in a whisper. The next instant a shot
rang out, and Gay stumbled forward as though he had tripped over the
underbrush, while his gun, slipping from his shoulder, discharged its
load into the air. His first confused impression was that he had knocked
against a poplar bough which had stuck him sharply in the side. Then, as
a small drift of smoke floated toward him, he thought in surprise,
"I'm shot. By Jove, that's what it means--I'm shot." At the instant,
underlying every other sensation or idea, there was an ironic wonder
that anybody should have hated him enough to shoot him. But while the
wonder was still engrossing him--in that same instant, which seemed to
cover an eternity, when the shot rang in his ears, something happened in
his brain, and he staggered through the curtain of grape-vine and sank
down as though falling asleep on the bed of life-everlasting. "It's
ridiculous that anybody should want to shoot me," he thought, while the
little round yellow sun dwindled smaller and smaller until a black cloud
obscured it.
A minute, or an hour afterwards, he opened his eyes with a start, and
lay staring up at the sky, where a flock of swallows drifted like smoke
in the cloudless blue.
Pages:
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527