"I just got through the pass in time. I could feel his breath on my
back--a hot, gun-powdery breath! It was awful, simply awful and horrible,
too. And just as I had resigned myself to be his entrée, by great luck
his big middle got wedged in the bottom of the V, and his scales scraped
like the plates of a ship against a stone pier!"

To her disgust she was laughing again.

"If I went back now out of fear of Pete Leddy," he continued, "that
dinosaur would know that I was such insignificant prey he would not even
take the trouble to knock me down with a forepaw. He would swallow me
alive and running! Think of that slimy slide down the red upholstery of
his gullet, not to mention the misery of a total loss of my dignity and
self-respect!"

He had spoken it all as if he believed it true. He made it seem
almost true.

"I like nonsense as much as anybody," she began, "and I do not forget
that you did me a great kindness."

"Which any stranger, any third person coming at the right moment might
have done," he interrupted. "Sir Walter's age has passed."

"Yes, but Pete Leddy belongs still farther back. We may laugh at his
ruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet!
Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must pay
with memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in the
streets of Little Rivers--a nightmare for life! Oh, I beg of you, though
it is fun for you to be killed, consider me! Don't go down into that