BOOK FIVE

BOOK OF FIGHTS AND OF THE BIG FIGHT.
THE ELEMENT OF COURAGE

CHAPTER I

BOSS MADDOX SHOWS HIS HAND

Ima asked: "Of what are you thinking, Percival?"

"Of when I shall leave you all—and how."

She replied: "Strange, then, how thoughts run. It was in my mind also."

Stranger how tricks and chances of life go! This trick and that—and this was to be his last night with the van folk. That chance and this—and within a few hours he was to be returned to Aunt Maggie, bade good-by at the close of his visit scarcely four months since. This trick and that, that chance and this, and he was to be put in the way of winning Dora—a way that never had seemed so obscure, never so impossible of attainment as when he came back to Japhra with her "I have not forgotten," at once shouting to him that she loved him and mocking him with the difference between her estate and his.

Already the tricks and chances were afoot. He was alone with Ima upon a rising bluff of common land. Considerably below them, so that they looked down as it were from a cliff to a valley, the fair was pitched and in full swing—that it was in full swing and he idle was the first step in the freakish hazards that were to encompass him this night.

A stifling evening had succeeded a burning day. Here on the bluff a breeze moved cool and soft as it had been waftings from the dusky cloak night dropped about them; below was heat and crowded life and clamour, rising in the waving reek of the naphtha flares; in shouts of the showmen; in shrill laughter from village girls at fun about the booths, or horseplay with their swains; in ceaseless rifle-cracks from the shooting-galleries—in drum-thumpings, in steam organs, in brazen instruments; occasionally, high above it all, in enormous oo-oo-oomphs from the caged lions in the huge marquee that housed Boss Maddox's Royal Circus and Monster Forest-bred Menagerie—a tremendous sound, as Percival thought when it came booming across the clamour, that was a brute's but that seemed, like some trump of protest against the din, to make brutish the human cries and shouts it governed.

Two crowds, leaving and entering, jostled one another at the entrance to the Royal Circus and Forest-bred Menagerie; stretching on either hand from where they pressed ran the minor shows under Boss Maddox's proprietorship, forming a noisy, flaring street that ended, facing the circus marquee, with "Foxy" Pinsent's Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Maddox's Royal Circus and Forest Bred Menagerie at one end, Pinsent's fine booth at the other—between them Maddox's Living Pictures, Maddox's Wild-West Shooting Gallery, Maddox's Steam Switch-back and Aerial Railway, Maddox's Original Marionettes, Maddox's Premier Boatswings, Maddox's Monster Panorama, Maddox's Royal Theatre and Concert Divan, Maddox's Elite Refreshment Saloons, Maddox's American Freak Museum, and all Maddox's smaller fry—coker-nut shies, hoop-las, Living Mermaid, Hall of Strength, Cave of Mystery, Magic Mirrors, and the rest of them; owned by Boss Maddox, financed by Boss Maddox, or, if of independent ownership, having the Boss's favour and acknowledging the Boss's ownership.

No booths whose proprietors called Stingo Boss were open: and that was one step in the tricks and chances of the day.

The gaunt figure of Boss Maddox, watchful and urgent this night for the very reason that the Stingo booths were closed, passed now along the further side of lights towards Foxy Pinsent's pitch. Head bent towards his left shoulder; hands clasped behind his back; uncommonly tall; uncommonly spare—that was Boss Maddox anywhere.

A further mark, as he moved through his little kingdom, proclaimed him who he was and what he was. Frequent nods of his head he made in response to hat touchings or greetings in the crowd; frequent stoppings to exchange a few words with some figure that stepped into his path—and broke away from others or pushed others aside to step there: the local tradesmen these, or members of the local Borough Council, anxious to be in with Boss Maddox and so to secure the considerable patronage in victualling and provender he was able to distribute; or anxious to let fellow-townsmen observe on what familiar terms they were with the Boss, and concerned to know that he found his pitch to his liking. A mighty man, the Boss in these days, who bought up his pitches and paid handsomely for them a year in advance, who on a famous occasion had fallen into dispute with a Borough Council, refused their district the honour of his shows, and thereby—by loss of entertainment and loss of revenue—had caused the Borough Councillors to suffer defeat at the next election. Things like that were remembered up and down the west of England; Boss Maddox in the result was reckoned a man to be placated, to be done homage, and to have his interests preserved. Only the old Stingo gang resisted him, and this day he had paid them dear for their want of allegiance.

His parade brought him at length to "Foxy" Pinsent's Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Foxy Pinsent had risen to be his lieutenant and right-hand man in the management of his business, and Boss Maddox was come to compare notes on how the Stingo crowd were taking their set-back.

Eight pugilists in flannels—two of them negroes—displayed themselves upon the raised platform outside the Academy of Boxing and School of Arms. Pinsent, in a long fawn coat reaching to his shoes, paced before them, crying to the assembled crowds their merits, their prowess, their achievements and their challenges. He swung a great bundle of boxing gloves in his right hand and, amid delighted shouts of the spectators, sent a pair flying to venturesome yokels here and there who pointed to one or other of the eight stalwarts in acceptance of combat.

As Boss Maddox pushed his way to the front the eight turned and filed into the booth. He raised a hand. Foxy Pinsent tossed a last pair of gloves to the crowd, came down the steps from the platform and joined him.

"How are they taking it, Boss?"

"Pretty tough. Move round with me and let 'em see we're watching. In a while I'm to have a word with Stingo and Japhra—you with me, boy."

Foxy Pinsent spat on the ground. "We've fixed the ——s this time," he said venomously.

III

The fixing of the Stingo crowd had been Boss Maddox's culminating stroke in the heavy hand he had pressed these many seasons upon those who named Stingo Boss. The bad blood between the two factions of which Japhra had told Percival years before had steadily increased with Boss Maddox's increasing dominance and position. Waxing more and more determined to crush under his rule the little knot of Stingo followers—or to crush them out—Boss Maddox had this day given them an extra twist—and they had made protest by refusing to erect their booths.

A new Fair ground had been marked out here since the last visit of the showmen. A broad stream marked one boundary, bridged only by the highroad bridge a mile up from the new ground. The new ground was small. Maddox's would require it all, the Boss announced. Beyond the stream was common land, free to all. "Yonder, you!" said Boss Maddox to the Stingo crowd. "Yonder, you!" and pointed across the stream with his stick.

It meant going back a mile and a mile down again so as to come to the common land. It meant worse than that, with a discovery that changed the first demur to loud and bitter protest: "No bridge except the highroad bridge? Then how were folk going to get over from the Fair Ground? No bridge? What game's this, Boss?"

"Your game," Boss Maddox told them in his stern and callous way. "Naught to do with me that the Fair Ground's changed. Your game. Get out and play it."

The angry crowd went to Stingo and Stingo to Boss Maddox. Boss Maddox could not refuse parley with Stingo, and gave it where the great pole of his circus marquee was being fixed—his own followers grouped about, enjoying the fun; Stingo's packed in a murmuring throng behind Stingo's broad back.

The interview was very short. "You're going too far, Boss Maddox," Stingo said in his husky whisper. "This ain't fair to the boys. Grant you the ground's too small. After your tent and Pinsent's there the rest should fall by lot. That's fair to all. It was done on the road Boss Parnell's time when you and me were boys."

"It's not done in mine," said Boss Maddox, and his words called up two murmurs—approval and mocking behind him, wrath before.

Stingo waited while it died away, then went close with words for Boss Maddox's private ear. "You've been out to make bad blood these three summers, Maddox," he said. "Have a care of it. I'll not be answerable for my boys here."

His tone was of grave warning, as between men of responsible position. But it was Foxy Pinsent, standing with Maddox, who replied to him. "We'll drink all we may brew," Foxy Pinsent said, and sneered: "We're not fat old women this side, Stingo."

The flag of a temper kept in control but now burst from his command came in violent purple into old Stingo's face. His huskiness went to its most husky pitch, "By God, Foxy! I'll stuff it into ye, if need be," he throated.

He took a calmer and wiser mood back to his followers, joining with Japhra in counselling a making the best of it across the stream to-night and a deputation to Boss Maddox, when heads on both sides were cooler, on the morrow. They would not listen to him. They would stay where they were, they told him. They could not open their booths here—they would not open them there; here, to assert their rights, they would stay. What was Boss Maddox's game?—to rid himself of them altogether?—they who had worked the West Country boy and man, girl and woman, in this company before Boss Maddox was heard of? Were they going to be turned adrift from it—from the roads they knew and the company they knew? Not they!—not if Boss Maddox and his crowd came at 'em with sticks! Let 'em come! Ah, let Boss Muddy Maddox and his crowd try 'em a bit further and the sticks would come out in their own hands as they came in their fathers' in the big fight that sent the Telfer crowd north in '30....

So the Stingo vans remained where they had been driven up on the edge of the Fair ground. The men for the most part shared their afternoon meal in groups that sullenly discussed their hurt. Some broodingly watched the erection of their rivals' booths. A few gathered about Egbert Hunt, who had oratory to deliver on this act of oppression. The winters Hunt had spent with "unemployed" malcontents had given a flow of language to a character that from boyhood had shaped away from honest work and towards hostility against authority. In the vans, among men who sweated as they toiled, and worked in the main for their own hands, he was commonly an object of contempt. To-day he found audience. He had words and ranted his best—"Tyrang!" the burden of it; rising, as he tossed his arms and worked himself up, to "'Boss' Maddox is he? 'Oo appointed 'im boss over you or over me? 'Boss' Maddox? Tyrang Maddox—that's what I name 'im."

He observed a titter run round those who listened to him; turned to seek its cause; with Tyrang Maddox found himself face to face; and before he could make movement of escape was sent to the ground with a stunning box on the ear. He shouted a stream of filthy abuse and made to spring to his feet. Boss Maddox's hand pinned him down and Boss Maddox's whip came about his writhing form in a rain of blows that, when they were done and he had taken the kick that concluded them, left him cowering.

"Whose hand are you, you whelp?" Boss Maddox demanded.

Egbert Hunt looked up at him. He was gasping with sobs of pain and sobs of rage. He looked up, hate and murder in his eye, and pressed his lips between his sobs.

The whip went up. "Whose hand?"

Egbert cowered back: "Old One-Eye's."

"Keep to his heel. Cross my sight again and the same is waiting for you."

Boss Maddox stalked away. A crowd had gathered from all parts of the camp, attracted by Egbert's screams. Egbert raised himself on one arm and looked at the grinning faces before him. He got stiffly to his feet, mumbling to himself, his breast still heaving with sobs. "Me, a full-grown man, to be used like a dog! Cross his path!—ill day for him when I do!"

He went a few paces, walking parallel to those assembled. Suddenly he turned to them, tears running down his face, and threw up his clenched hands. "I'll put a knife in 'im!" he cried. "By God, I'll put a knife in 'im!"

The crowd laughed.

CHAPTER II

IMA SHOWS HER HEART

Percival suggested to Ima that they should use in a stroll the leisure evening that the trouble in the vans had given him. Some drink had been passing as the day wore on, and the heat between the two factions was not better for it. Here and there bickerings were assuming an ugly note.—"Let's get out of it," Percival said. "Come along, Ima, up to the top over there—Bracken Down they call it."

It was close upon nine o'clock as they left the Fair. They picked their way along the paths through the tall bracken that gave the place its name—reaching a clearing in the thick growth, by mutual accord they dropped down for a glad rest.

Very still and cool here among the fern, the Fair a nest of tossing lights, faint cries and that lion's trump of oo-oo-oomph beneath them; a remote place of silence, and silence communicated itself to them until Ima broke it by her question "Of what are you thinking, Percival?" and to his reply—that he thought of when he should leave them all, and how—told him "Strange then how thoughts run. It was in my mind also."

Stranger how tricks and chances of life go! Looking back afterwards, recalling her words, Percival realised how events had run from one to another upon the most brittle thread of hazards. The trouble in the vans had sent him out here with Ima; that was the merest chance; that was the beginning of the thread.

Very cool and remote here among the bracken. He had gone back to silence after her last words. It was she who spoke again.

"Are you weary of it?" she asked.

He was lying at his full length, face downwards, his chin upon his clasped fingers. She sat upright beside him, one knee raised and her hands about it.

He turned his cheek to where his chin had been and looked up lazily at her: "Why, no, not weary of it, Ima. I like the life. I've been at it a long time. When the day comes I shall be sorry to go."

She was looking straight before her. "A sorry day for us, also," she said.

"Will you be sorry, Ima?"

"Of course I shall be sorry."

He gave a sound of mischievous laughter. Lying idly stretched out there, the warm night and the unusual sense of laziness he was enjoying stirred in him some prankish spirit, or some spirit of more warm desire, that he had never felt in Ima's company. "Yet you are always trying to get rid of me," he said; and he laughed again on that mischievous note, and snuggled his cheek closer against his hands, and felt that spirit run amicably through him as he stretched and then released his muscles.

She looked down at him, smiling. "Unkind to return my conduct so," she said. "No, I have but reminded you you are not always for the rough ways."

He had watched her face as he lay there, seen how her hair, her brow, her eyes, alone in all the shadow about Bracken Down caught the light from where the light was starred across the sky, and how her lips seemed also to attract it. Now when she looked down and smiled, it was as if some gentle radiance were bent upon him, or as if Night, in visible embodiment, gracious as Summer night, starred, tranquil, cool, stooped to his couch.

He got quickly to his feet, that spirit tingling now.

"Going?" she asked, and the lamp of her face was turned up to him so that he looked full into it.

"No," he said, pronouncing the word as he had made his laugh—as if some inward excitement pressed its escape.

"No." He came in front of her, went on his knees and sat back on his heels. That brought him close to her, facing her.

"Ima," he said, "you've got six—seven stars on your face, do you know that?"

She smiled, unaware of his mood.

Himself he was scarcely aware of it: "Well, you have, though," he said. He approached a finger towards her and pointed, and almost touched her while he spoke. "You have, though. Two on your hair—there and there. One on your forehead—there. One in each eye—that's five. Two on your mouth—one here, one there: seven stars!"

"Foolish talk," she smiled. "We had a Romany woman once with us who told fortunes. Just so have I heard her speak to village girls. When—"

His eyes betrayed him. Concern and worse leapt into hers. She thrust out a hand to stop him, but he bent forward swiftly and strongly. Urged by the spirit that laziness and the warm, still night had put into him, that had led him on in mischief and that now suddenly engulfed him—"Stars on your mouth!" he cried, and caught his arms about her to kiss her.

He felt her twist as she were made of vibrant steel and strong as steel. His lips missed hers, and scarcely brushed her face. He tried for her lips again, laughing while he tried, and pressed her to him and felt her twist and strain away with a strength that surprised him while he laughed.

"Only a kiss, Ima! Only a kiss!"

She was of steel, but he held her. She spoke, and the strangeness of her words made him release her. "Ah, ah, Percival!" she gasped. "How you despise me!"

He let her go and she sprang away and upright, as a bow stick released. He let her go, and stared at her where she stood panting fiercely, and stared in more surprise when, checking her sobbing breaths, she spoke again.

In their struggle her hair had loosened and it fell, half-bound, in a heavy cascade upon one shoulder and down her breast. The starlight gleamed on it and on her dark face framed against it. She had a wild look, as if her mild beauty had suddenly gone gipsy; her sobbing voice had a wild tone, and he noticed the drop back to the "thee" long absent from her speech: "Ah, this to happen!" she cried. "This! Ah, what a thing I must be to thee!"

The strangeness and the violence of her distress astonished him. What had he done? Tried for a kiss? In the name of all the kisses snatched from pretty girls—! "Why, Ima?" was all he could say. "Ima?"

She dropped to the ground with a collapsed action as though, oppressed as she was, standing were insupportable. She covered her face with her hands, ceased her sobbing breaths; but he saw her trembling in all her frame.

Rising, he went to her, put a hand on her shoulder, and, at the convulsive movements he felt, made deeper the contrition for his careless act that her distress now caused him. "Ima, what have I done? Only tried to kiss you in fun. A sudden, silly thing—I don't know why—I never meant it—but only a kiss in fun."

He waited a moment, grieved for her, half-vexed with her—then had his answer and was faced with emotions as sudden and unexpected as when a moment before, without premeditation, he had her struggling in his arms.

She drew a deep breath and answered him. "That is it—in fun!" she said. She threw out her arms across her raised knees—the palms upward, the fingers curved in a most desolate action. "In fun!" she said intensely. "I would to God—I would to God thou hadst done it in passion."

He came in front of her. "Tell me what it is I have done to you," he said firmly.

The intensity went from her voice. She spoke then and thenceforward very softly, as if she were making explanation to a child, and in her answer she used again the term that went with the days of the "thee" and "thou" now returned to her.

"Used me," she answered him softly, "used me as any wanton is to be used, little master."

He cried, "Ima! After all these years we have known each other—a kiss in fun!"

But she went on: "What maids are kissed in fun? That a man weds does he use so? That the sisters of such as thou art does he so use? That give him cause for regard does he so use? What maids, then?" and answered herself, "Such as I am!"

"Oh!" he cried, wounded with pity for her, "Oh, Ima—Ima, dear, don't talk like that. What can you mean? I am sorry—sorry! Forgive me!"

Her sad eyes almost smiled at him. "I have nothing to forgive thee," she said. "It was but a foolish fancy that I had. Well that it should be broken—ended that;" and she looked again across the dark bracken, her arms extended upon her knees in that desolate pose.

It wrung him with pity—his dear Ima! "But tell me!" he pressed her, anxious to soothe her. "Tell me what you mean by fancy—by saying 'ended that!'"

She answered: "That all I had tried should be broken suddenly—suddenly as a star falls. I had not minded if I had been warned."

"What have you tried, Ima?—I want to know—to show you how sorry I am."

She was silent for a considerable space. When she began to speak she spoke without pause, without modulations of her low tone, without notice of the stammered exclamations that her words broke from him.

"Hear me, then," she said. "The thing is no more mine—thou mayst know it. To what shall I go back for when I first knew that I loved thee?—"

"Ima!"

"Why, from the first I knew it and began to try to fit me for thee. Why went I to shut myself in roofs and walls, to learn hard books and gentle ways and how to speak in thy fashion?—so thou shouldst not scorn me, so I might make me to be seemly in thy sight—"

"Ima! I never dreamt—!"

"—Why have I gone my ways so—winter by winter leaving my father's van? Because I loved thee since I first saw thee—"

"Don't! Don't!" he cried. There was something completely terrible to him in this avowal from a woman—immodest, shameful, horrible—that must cause her violation of her most sacred feelings as they would be violated were she thrust naked before him; that caused him agony for her suffering, and agony that he should see it, as he would endure agony for her and for himself if made to see her nudity. "Don't, Ima! Don't! I understand—I see everything now. I ought to have known!"

But she went on—it might have been some requiem she made to some poor treasured thing now dead in her extended arms. She went on: "Because I loved thee—ah, worshipped all thy doings, all thy looks—loved thee with all the love that men and women love—as mothers love, as lovers love, as friends love, as brothers love,—there is no love but I have loved thee with it, and I have thought them all and loved thee with each one the better to enjoy my love—"

"Ima!"

"—Why cried I 'this to happen!' Because by thy kiss I saw that I was nothing to thee—and less than nothing. All my poor trying suddenly proved of no avail. All my poor fancy that haply thou mightst turn to me if I could be worthy of thee suddenly gone to dust that the winds sport. Why cried I 'ended that!'—"

She sighed very deeply. Her trembling had in some degree communicated itself to him. He trembled for the shame he knew she must be suffering, and for the effect upon him that her gentle, even voice had, crooning its tragedy in the darkness of their remote and silent situation, and for the effect upon him of that long sigh—rising and then falling away to tiniest sound, as it had been the passing of some spirit released to glide away across the bracken.

"—Why cried I 'ended that'?" and then her long, sad sigh; and then: "Because all is nought, little master;" and he saw her fingers extend and her head bow a little....

She arose then, slowly, and he went back to give her room. Her hair had slipped the last coil that held it, and was in a black sheen to her waist before one shoulder and in a black sheen to her waist behind her back. She began to loop it up with deft but tired fingers and looked at him while she twined it. Her face was very kind to him; the stars caught it, and he saw those stars upon her mild mouth that had tricked him to his wanton act: they seemed to show her almost smiling at him.

He asked: "Are we going now?"

She smiled then, gently. "Nay," she said. "I have left my poor secrets here—suffer me to go alone." Then turned and left him; and he watched her form swiftly merging to the darkness—now high among the bracken, now lower and lower yet, as though it were a deepening pool she entered. Now gone.

III

It seemed to Percival, left alone, as if some horrible and most oppressive trouble had befallen him. This piteous thing had struck so suddenly that for some moments he remained only numbed by it, as numbness precedes the onset of pain from a blow. When the full meaning returned to him, "Good God!" he cried aloud, "What a thing to have happened!" and most tenderly—with increasing tenderness, with increasing grief—he went through all she had revealed and how she had revealed it. It was surely the most monstrous pitiful thing that ever could be, her secret plots and strivings to fit herself for what she yearned—tasking herself in "gentle ways," in speech of his fashion, in hard books, in the life between walls and under roofs; he ached for her in every bone as he thought of her thus schooling herself—for him. "Oh, horrible, horrible!" he muttered, writhing for her to remember all her little cares for him—her attention to his clothes, her concern that he should not get into "rough ways"; horrible! horrible! now that he knew their loving purpose. And then her revelation of it! He must rise and pace, the better to endure the recollection of that. How terribly she struggled in his arms! "God, what a beast a man can be!" he cried. What agony must have wrung that cry, "Ah, Percival, how you must despise me!" What agony that "This to happen!" What pain, what bleeding of her heart, that lamentable ending—"Because all is naught, little master!" Happy, happy time when first she used to call him by that quaint endearment; in what travail, in what blackness, it had come from her now! What had she done? Why fastened such a love upon him whose love was utterly pledged away? Nay, the torment was What had he done? What vile and brutal ends had he used to knock her to her senses? What manner of sympathy had he given her when she lay bleeding?

"I must go to her," he said abruptly; and at the best speed the darkness would admit he twisted his way through the paths among the bracken towards the distant nest of lights.

CHAPTER III

PERCIVAL SHOWS HIS FISTS

He ran in two moods. First he was earnest above all things to hold her hands and comfort her—to explain, to soothe, to endear. To hold her hands and tell her how fond, how very, very fond he was of her, of how they should be sister and brother, and the happiest and fondest sister and brother that ever were. To thank her, thank her for all her sweet, devoted ways. To tell her how good she was, how he admired her. That was one mood. The other was a savage and burning anger at himself, partly for his wanton act towards her, partly born of his agony of discomfort at the revelation she had made. The moods were intermingled. He yearned to comfort her for her suffering, he writhed to think he had witnessed that suffering. He was in the one part utter tenderness towards her—in the other flame, furious flame, most eager for vent.

The tricks and chances of life had fuel for the flame, not outlet for the tenderness, as he came to the nest of lights.

He went quickly to Japhra's van. It was end-on to him as he approached; and as he came to the shafts he saw a group of men there talking,—Japhra, Stingo, Boss Maddox. He supposed—and was confirmed by the words he caught as he passed them—that they were discussing the dispute. "I'll ask Pinsent," he heard Boss Maddox say, and saw and heard him turn and call "Pinsent! Here, Foxy, where are you?" as though Foxy Pinsent had been of the group a moment before.

He passed quickly to the tail of the van and himself found Pinsent. "Angry, my pretty duck?" Foxy Pinsent was saying. "Angry? Chuck! chuck!"

It was to Ima that he was saying it; and with his last words, lolling against the entrance steps, he put out a hand to chuck her chin. She stepped out of his reach, and in relief cried, "Ah, Percival!" as Percival approached.

Flame, furious flame most eager for vent!

Choked for words by the flame's fierce leap and burn, "Clear out of this!" Percival said.

Foxy Pinsent turned his head slowly from Ima to Percival and looked Percival coolly up and down with the foxy smile. He put his elbows back to lean against the van, and very deliberately crossed one foot over the other. "Go to hell, won't you?" he said mildly.

It was a double smart he took to wipe the studied insolence from his face and to plant venom there. Percival's open hand that struck his mouth—a tough, vicious jolt with the arm half-crooked, a boxer's hit—drove his head against the van; and his "Ah, curse you!" followed the sharp smack and thud quick as if the three sounds—clip, thud, hiss—belonged to some instrument discharged.

He sprang forward, head back, hitting quickly with both hands, like the rare boxer he was—feinted with his right, drove his left against Percival's forehead, took a sharp one-two! on mouth and throat, and they were engaged, fighting close, fighting hard, and savage and glad, and fierce and exultant, each of them, at last to spring their common hate.

In its suddenness and fury, in its briefness and the manner of its check, the thing was like the sudden woof! of flame of a spark to a handful of gunpowder. There is the belch and blinding flash of heat, then the thick cloud of smoke. There was the swift drum of blows, then the rush of feet—Stingo, Japhra, Boss Maddox, men from here, men from there, in that trap-door swiftness with which commotion throws up a crowd—and the two were grasped and pulled apart and held apart, struggling like terriers that have had the first taste of blood and to collect the glut are gone blind to blows or authority.

Stingo from behind threw his two immense arms about Percival and leant with all his weight the better to lock them. Boss Maddox thrust his tall form before Pinsent, and snatched a wrist and gripped it in his long fingers. Japhra was at Percival's hands that tore at Stingo's.

"Lay on here, some of you!" Boss Maddox called, struggling with Pinsent's arm. "Get that other arm!—Dago! Frenchy! Jackson! Darkie! Look alive with it! Drop it, Foxy! Drop it! What the devil's up with you?"

And Stingo's strained whispers, in jerks and gusts by reason of his exertions: "Easy, Percival! Easy with it! Easy, I say! You can't shift me, boy! Get that hand, Japhra! Get that hand!"

Then the smoke clears and there remains only the acrid smell of the burning, and the sense of heat.

The two were dragged apart till a safe space separated them and they fronted each other before the groups about them—their faces furious, their bodies still, but their hands plucking at the hands that held them as they made their answers.

"Struck me!" Foxy Pinsent shouted. "Struck me! By God! I'll teach him! I've been saving it up for him a long time. Let me go, Boss! What's the sense of holding me like this? Struck me, the whelp, I tell you! I've got to have him first or last! Let me go!"

And Percival: "And more to give you, Pinsent! Teach me, eh? If I could get!—Japhra! Stingo! It's no business of yours, this! Damn your interference! Japhra! Japhra! Let go my hands!"

They cooled a little as the hands still held them and their explanations were demanded. Boss Maddox left Pinsent to other constraint and came and stood in the little space between the two groups, hands behind his back in the familiar posture, shoulders slightly hunched, head on one side, and turning it this way and that as Percival or Pinsent spoke.

Presently he looked at Stingo. "That boy's right," he said, with a jerk back at Pinsent. "He's been struck. He's Foxy. This can't end here. He's got to have his rights."

"He'll get 'em," Stingo said, with as much grimness as his huskiness could convey. "He'll get 'em if I let this lot loose. Don't you let him worry, Boss."

Boss Maddox turned squarely on Pinsent. "Give it a rest till the morning, Foxy. You boys can't fight in this darkness—not you two."

Pinsent laughed: "I'm not going to fight him. I'm going to thrash him."

"Let me go, Japhra! Boss, let's have hands off! It's our show—no one else's."

Boss Maddox went back to his first contention. "This can't end here, Stingo," and Japhra answered him: "Nay, there's blood to be let, Boss. We can't stop it—nor have call to." He released Percival while he spoke, but kept a hand on him, and motioned Stingo's arms away. He spoke in his slow habit, and with seeming reluctance, but there was a glimmer of relish in his voice. "They've to settle it, Boss."

"Will you fight him, Pinsent?" Boss Maddox asked.

Pinsent shook off the clutches upon him. He came forward two deliberate paces, and with great deliberation stretched himself, and with great deliberation spat upon the ground. Then fixed his eye on Percival. "If he likes to get out of it with a whipping," Pinsent said, "I'll learn him the manners he wants with your whip and let him off at that. If he's got the guts to stand up, I'll roast him till he lays down." He thrust forward his body towards Percival and said mockingly: "Which way? Which way, my pretty gentleman?"

Percival's face was a white lamp in the dusky night. "Give us room!" he said.

Then Pinsent's voice lost its deliberate drawl and rasped out in a rasp that showed his breeding and showed his hate: "I want light to serve you up, my gentleman! Light and a pair of shoes! Christ! I've waited too long for this to spoil it. I've a pattern to put on that pretty face of yours—not in this dark. Where'll I fight him, Boss? Where?"

"Along the road in the morning."

Percival came up. "I'll not wait, Boss. You've heard him. I'll not wait."

Pinsent rasped: "Morning be withered! Now! Now, while I'm hot. Where'll I fight him?"

Boss Maddox peered at his watch, then looked across the booths. "Nigh midnight—few left yonder. We'll be shut down in twenty minutes. At one o'clock."

And Japhra, a strange tremble in his voice: "In your tent, Boss. The boys will want to watch this. Room there, and good light."

Boss Maddox turned to Pinsent: "Good for you? The circus tent?"

"The place for it," Pinsent said. "Sharp at one. Japhra, you and me are ring men; come and settle a point."

"Come thou to me," Japhra answered him sturdily. "Thou and I!—I knew the ring, the knuckle ring, before thou sucked."

"Come to the tent," Boss Maddox interposed. "Best settle there."

Japhra took Percival a space away. "Lay thee down," he said. His voice was frankly trembling now, and he pressed both Percival's hands in his. "Bide by my words; bide by them. Lay thee down till I return to thee. Forget thy spite against yonder fox. Ima!"

She was at his side, her hands clasped together, her face white and strained.

"Forget him his spite, and what comes, Ima. While he lies, with a rug and with his boots from his feet, bide thou there and read to him—Crusoe, eh? Stingo and I will make for thee, master. I am not long gone."

CHAPTER IV

FOXY PINSENT V. JAPHRA's GENTLEMAN

Visitors to the booths who had stayed late that night went home complaining of the abruptness with which the shows were closed and of the uncouth way in which showmen who had fawned and flattered for their patronage suddenly seemed no more occupied with them than to bustle them off the ground and set their faces townwards.

But visitors were not in the line of communication that flashed that amazing news around the camp:

"Heard it?"

"No!"

"Foxy Pinsent's to fight Japhra's Gentleman in the marquee!"

"What of it?"

"What of it, yer muddy thick? What of it? Not a show—private! Had a scrap and to fight it out!"

"Eh? Fac'? No! When?"

"One o'clock. When the ground's clear." And, with a nod at the sightseers, "Get 'em out, mate! Get 'em out! Stars and stripes! What a knock-out!"

So, as the Fiery Cross among the Highland glens rushed with incredible swiftness, leaving in its wake a trail of mad commotion, the message flashed from mouth to mouth, booth to booth, van to van—received with utter incredulity, grasped with wildest excitement, relished with a zeal that caused every other thought and object to be abandoned, and resulted in a tide of feverish agitation to be at leisure for details and for the business that drove out naphtha flares and visitors alike as it swept across the ground. For there was more in the fight than the rare thrill of fight itself. It was accepted everywhere as the meeting by champion of the two factions; and the bickerings of many months, the final poison of that day's events, rushed a savage zest into the appetites that waited the encounter. Foxy Pinsent was Boss Maddox's party, coat off to put that Stingo crowd properly in its place; Japhra's Gentleman was the Stingo following, girt at last to collect a little on account for much outstanding debt. When, towards one o'clock, the surging crowd outside the marquee made a sudden movement forward and into the tent, it entered with rival cries, taunts, faction jeers—and separated, as a barrier had divided it, into two bodies that faced in mutual mock across the ring that had been formed.

They found preparations at the point of completion, done by half a dozen principles that Boss Maddox had called in, who stood conferring with him now on final arrangements—Stingo, with Ginger Cronk and Snowball White of Japhra's booth; Foxy Pinsent, hands in the pockets of his long yellow coat, with Buck Osborn and others of his Academy of Boxing and School of Arms—Pink Harman, Dingo Spain, Nut Harris. At a little distance Japhra stood with Percival. He had towels on his arm, a sponge in his hand, and as the crowd took up their places he turned and called a single word across the arena to the group within the ring.

"Gloves?" he called.

Pinsent answered him. Pinsent took his hands from the pockets of his coat and curved up two brown fists. "There's no gloves between us," he called back; and at his words the two groups of spectators drew as it were one long breath of relish—"Ah-h-h!" that hardened to murmurs of grim satisfaction, each man to his neighbour—"The raw 'uns!" "The knuckle!" "The knuckle!" "The raw 'uns!" and broke into individual bickerings, cries of derision, across the ring; and thence into a sudden wordless shouting, one party against the other—a blaring vent of old antagonism fermented by new cause that made the animals in the menagerie cages at the end of the arena leap from uneasy slumber to spring against their bars and join their chorus to a chorus brutish as their own.

To a renewed outburst of that clamour—the thing was on the tick of beginning—Ima raised the flap that covered the entrance to the marquee and stepped within. Simultaneously the shouting stilled with a sudden jerk that left an immense silence—Foxy Pinsent had stepped into the ring.

She stopped as if the sudden stillness struck her; and she took in the scene, her hands clasped against her breast.

The ring had been contrived within the inner circle that forms the working part of a circus arena. The canvas belt, some two feet high, that surrounded this circle during a performance, had been taken up as to the arc farthest from where she stood and brought forward to the great pole of the marquee. The wide half circle thus bounded was made the ring for the fight. Around the tent the lights above the seats had been extinguished; the great lamp of many burners that encircled the mast enclosed the ring in its arc of clear light. In the surrounding dimness, as Ima paused and watched, were the high tiers of red-draped, empty benches. Within the light's arc she saw the rival crowds on either hand; straight before her the gap that separated the two clusters and declared their enmity. At the centre front of each, against the canvas that bounded the ring, was a little caving-in of the throng where men in their shirt-sleeves knelt. Pinsent had just stepped out from this knot on the one side: in the other she saw Percival seated on her father's knee. A hundred men and more were behind Pinsent, behind Percival forty or fewer; there was significance in how each throng stood closely packed, refusing the accommodation that the ample space between them offered—hatred was deep that preferred the discomfort of jostling and tiptoe standing to easier view at the price of mingling. Every face was beneath a peaked cap or dented bowler hat and above a scarfed neck; a pipe in most caused, as it were, a grey, shifting bank of smoke, cut flat by the darkness above the lamp's reflection, to be swaying above the caps as though they balanced it. Here and there were clumps of colour where women in blouses of red or white clustered together. Sweat, for the place was hot, glistened on this face and on that as if the grey, shifting bank above them exuded drops of water. There was something very sinister, very eerie, in the complete silence that for a moment held the scene; and Ima started to hear a sound of breathing and of restless movement. She looked around. On either hand of where she stood the menagerie cages were banked. Dark or tawny forms were coiled or stretched there; in one cage was a big wolf, head down, nose at the bars, that watched the light as she watched it.

She went quickly forward to where she saw her father. Impatient way was made for her. Japhra was talking earnestly to Percival, and they scarcely seemed to notice her. She slipped down beside them, her knees against the canvas, and sat on her heels, her hands clasped at their full extension. She had said she would not come. She had found she must. While she had been with Percival waiting Japhra's return after the scene with Pinsent he had begun the contrition he had come to her to express. She suffered him nothing of it. "That is left where we laid it among the bracken," she told him. "Let it abide there. Look already what has come of it. If I had stayed with thee, this had not happened."

But her leaving him, and why she left, and his following her, and what came then, were of the train of the tricks and chances that shaped for him this day.

III

Boss Maddox spoke. "They're going to fight," he said, taking up a position against the mast and addressing the gathering in his dry, authoritative way—"They're going to fight, and you can count yourselves lucky to see it. If any one interferes—out he goes. Everything's settled. If any one sees anything he don't think right or according to rule he can go outside and look for it—keep his mouth shut while he's going and go quick. Three minute rounds. One minute breathers. Ten count for the knock-out. Stingo 'll stand here with the watch. I'm referee. And I'm boss—bite on that. Come along, Foxy."

Pinsent, who had stepped over the canvas and strolled to the centre of the ring as Ima entered, was still in the long yellow coat, still with his hands in his pockets. He liked to have all those eyes upon him. He liked to give pause and opportunity for the thought that this fine figure standing here had fought in class rings and bore a reputation that gentlemen in shirt-fronts had paid gold to see at battle. He suffered usually a slight nervousness at the first moment of stepping into those class rings: to-night and here he had an exultant feeling, and he carried it with a most effective swagger. He knew Percival could box. He had watched him spar in Japhra's booth. He knew, to express his own thoughts, there 'd be a little bit of mixin' up at the outset; but he knew, as only Japhra among them all also knew, that to his own skill that had put him in a good rank of his weight he added the experience, the craft, the morale of a score and more class fights, and that such a quality is to be reckoned as a third arm against that poor thing—a "novice." "A novice, Boss!" he had said to Boss Maddox an hour before. "A novice—I lay there's more'n a few 'ud stop this fight if they knew what I was fighting. 'Strewth! I'd not do it myself but for what I've been saving up against the whelp!"

What he had been saving up came poisonously to his mind as he stood there, driving away even the flavour of the admiration he felt he was receiving. At last the price for that "Foxy" he had been dubbed and had endured. At last that price! Folk had come to the booths to see Japhra's Gentleman, had they!—A price for that! That smack in the mouth an hour ago!—A price for that! a big price and he would have it to the full!

The foxy smile contracted his mouth and eyes as he began to draw the scarf from his neck, slipped the long yellow coat, and peeled a sweater. A delighted cry went up from his supporters—good old Foxy had done them the honour of appearing in his class ring kit! Japhra, whispering last earnest words in Percival's ear, looked up at the cry, and twisted up his face at what he saw. Naked but for the tight boxing trunks and boxing boots, Pinsent declared himself a rare figure of a fighting machine. Japhra knew the points. Pinsent threw out his arms at right angles to his sides and drew a long breath. Japhra saw the big round chest spring up and expand as a soap bubble at a breath through the pipe—the cleft down the bone between the big chest muscles; the tense, drumlike look of the skin where it swept into waist from the lower ribs; the ridge from neck to shoulder on either side where the head of the back muscles showed; the immense span of the arms, rooted in great hitting shoulders that, at such length and along such well-packed arms, would drive the fists like engine rods. He scaled a shade over ten stone, Japhra guessed. Percival would be little above nine-and-a-half; and in Pinsent's uncommonly long legs—their length accentuated by the brief boxing-drawers—Japhra saw a further and most dangerous quality in his armoury. He swung an arm and side-stepped to his left as Japhra watched; and Japhra's lips twitched. The left leg not slid the foot but lifted it and put it away and down, more with the ease of an arm action than of a leg—as a spider lifts and places; up, two feet away, the body perfectly poised on the right; down, and in a flash the body alert upon it—down, and in a flash the arm extended and back again with the stab of a serpent's tongue. There went up a murmur of applause at the consummate ease of the action, and Japhra turned to Percival with whispered repetition of last words.

"Thou seest that?" he whispered. "Thou must follow, follow; press him; give him no rest. In-fighting, in-fighting, quick as thou canst hit!"

Earnest anxiety was in his voice as he spoke and in his lined face that was all twisted up so that every line became a pucker, as a withered apple that is squeezed in the hand.

"Now bide me a last time," he said. "He hath no bowels for punishment. There is a coward streak in him—I have seen it. That thou must find by following, following—quick as thou canst sling them. Good for thee that he has chosen the knuckle. Thou hast used thy hands. That fox yonder hath been too fine a swell these years to pull and carry, shift and load as thou hast done. He will rue his choice when his knuckles bruise; thine like stone. He will use his tongue on thee, mocking thee. Pay no heed to that. He will use his ring tricks. Watch for them. Up now! they are ready for thee. My life is in this fight, little master—punish, punish, punish; give him no peace—it resteth on that. All the luck!"

He slipped Percival's coat, and Percival stepped across the canvas and went where Pinsent waited him in the centre. He wore the dress in which he boxed in the booth—white flannel trousers, a vest of thin gauze, white canvas shoes with rubber soles. He carried his arms at his sides, twisting up his fingers to make toughest those fists that Japhra had said were like stone. He held his head high, looking straightly at Pinsent; stopped within an arm's length of him and turned his eyes informatively to Boss Maddox, then direct into Pinsent's again.

His covered limbs joined with his few pounds' lesser weight to make him appear the slighter figure of the two. "Going to eat him!" a voice behind Pinsent broke out.

"Going to muddy well eat him!" and Pinsent's mouth and eyes contracted into their foxy smile at the words.

"Ready?" from Boss Maddox. "All right, Stingo. Get along with it."

"Time!" said Stingo's husky whisper; and, as a hand laid to the wire of dancing puppets, the word jerked both figures into movement.

CHAPTER V

A FIGHT THAT IS TOLD

They tell that fight along the road to-day. Old men who saw it want never a listener when the talk turns on boxing and they can say: "Ah, but I saw Japhra's Gentleman and Foxy Pinsent back in Boss Maddox's time."

I tell it as it is told.

Why (the old men say), why, this Japhra's Gentleman, mark me, he was one of the quick-ones—one of the movers, one of the swift-boys, one of the dazzlers, one of the few! He come in tic-tac! tic-tac! tic-tac!—quicker'n my old jaws can say it: Left-right! left-right! left-right!—like his two fists was a postman's knock. Pinsent never see nothing like it. He was one of the class ones, this Pinsent—one of the pretty ones, one of the sparrers, one of the walk-rounds, talk-rounds, one of the wait-a-bits; never in no hurry, the class-ring boys—all watching first to see what a man's got for 'em. He muddy soon saw, Foxy! Foxy never see nothing like it. First along, he prop this quick-boy off, an' prop him off, an' prop him off; an' catch him fair and rattle him, an' smash him one and stagger him, an' side-step an' shake him up; but still he come, and still he come, and still he come; tic-tac! tic-tac! tic-tac! ah, he was one of the quick-ones, one of the dazzlers, one of the steel-boys.

Pinsent never see nothing like it. He come back after the first round thinking this was novice stuff—going all out like that from the gong—and laughin' at the bustle of it, an' Buck Osborn an' Nut Harris an' his boys laughin' back at him. Second round he come back an' give a bit of a spit on the ground an' ease up his trunks an' look thoughtful. Third round he step back slowly 's if he'd a puzzle to think about,—third round I mind me Dingo, Dingo Spain, chip him friendly while he pass the sponge over him, and Foxy turn on him like he had the devil in his eyes. "What in hell's that to you?" he give him. "Keep your grins in your ugly mouth," he give him, "lest you want me to wipe it for you!" He was rattled some, that foxy one; not hurted much—one of the tough ones, Foxy—but bothered by it an' not quite sure what to make of it, like a man with a wops buzzin' round his head—that was the like of it with that quick-boy comin' at him, an' comin' at him, an' comin' at him.

Ay, but he was one of the tough ones, Foxy—one of the lie-lows, one of the shifty ones, one of the snaky-boys, one of the cautions! He went out fourth round for to serve it up to that quick-boy with some of his crafty bits. I like a bit o' craft meself. I was a Maddox man, me, an' I set up a holler, an' we all holler, take my word, when we see Foxy servin' of it up to that quick-boy like he lay hisself to do then. Give his tongue to him a treat, he did. Walkin' out to him—tiptoe an' crouchin' at him. "What, you're in a hurry, my gentleman!" he chips him. "You'll make yourself hot, my pretty pet, if you don't steady down," he chips him. "That's not lady's manners, runnin' about like you've been," he chips him.

That quick-boy come at him an' he slip a bit of craft on him quick as a snake. Side-step, he did, that foxy one; an' duck an' say, "Where's your manners?" an' rake his head across an' butt that quick-boy's stomach so he grunts; an' up an' hook him one, an' follow him an' lash him one, an' "Mind your manners, you bastard!" he says an' half across the ring an' waitin' for him. Three times he butt him so, an' each time hook him one, an' all the time lip-lippin' of him, an' us boys hollerin' an' Stingo's boys hollerin' an' the animals in the cages hollerin' back on us. Holler!—I mind me I was in a fair muck sweat with it.

Back he goes again, next round, that foxy one, an' "Why, dear, dear, you've got some beauty-spots on your face, my pretty gentleman!" he chips him. "Come an' let's paint 'em up a bit for you, my little lady!" he chips him. Ay, that was a round, that one! That Japhra,—a rare one that Gipsy Japhra—had been talkin' to that quick-boy whiles he had him on his knee; an' when he comes in, an' that foxy one goes to rake him with buttin' him again, he step back, that quick-boy, for to cut him as he come out. I see the move—but that foxy one! All craft that foxy one was—one of the snaky ones, one of the tough boys, one of the coves! 'Stead o' swingin' through with his head, he swing up and hook his left 'un with it, an' chin that quick-boy one, an' "Paint!" he says, "There's paint for you, you dog!" an' lash him one where he had a little mouse-lump over his eye; an' true enough, the paint splits across an' comes streaky down that quick-boy's face.

You'd ha' thought—I lay me I know what that foxy one thought. Blood fierce went that foxy one when he see that blood, an' in he goes, fierce after blood, for to finish it; leaved off his craft and went in for to hammer him. He muddy soon goed back to craft again, Foxy! That quick-boy shook his head an' run back; an' draws a breath an' meets him; an' throats him one an' staggers him; an' draws a breath an' follows him; an' pastes him one an' grunts him; an' tic-tac! tic-tac! tic-tac! an' follows him, an' follows him, an' follows him. Like a wops he was—like a bull-tamer he was, an' that foxy one gets all muddled with him, an' runs back puzzled with him, an' then catches hold of hisself, an' stops hisself—I reckon he wondered where 'n hell he'd be soon if he didn't—and puts in that duck an' butt craft again; an' that quick-boy steadies for him like old Japhra bin teachin' of him; an' when that foxy one swings across, that quick-boy smashes up under him—crack! like a stone-breaker with his hammer; an' that foxy one come back to us with his mouth split, an' his chin red; an' while he sit blowin' take a toof out; an' while he sit blowin' get it drip-drop on his chest from where the blood run to his chin.

But Percival had suffered under the punishment of these savage encounters, and under the immense exertions of that unceasing in-fighting to which Japhra had urged him. Back on Japhra's knee, "I've dosed him, Japhra," he said. "He's taking all I can give him." There was a sob in his quick breathing as he spoke, and he smiled weakly and leant back against Japhra's shoulder.

Japhra's eyes were sunk in his twisted face to twin points of glistening light. His voice trembled, and his hand as he plied the sponge. "He will not drink much more," he said. "Thou art hot after that coward streak in him. I mark the signs of it. Keep up the dose, master! Never such a fight—and never thy like! never thy like! Follow him, son of mine—follow him! follow him! A last call on thyself! Watch him where he sucks his tender knuckles."

Pinsent knew better than Japhra the tenderness of those bruised knuckles of his: he knew too that he was housing an uneasy feeling beneath his belt, born of the bewildering persistence of his opponent and of the punishing fists which that persistence pressed upon him, giving him no peace. He was sore; he had reached the point when blows were beginning to hurt him—and that was a point beyond which he knew it was dangerous for him to delay proceedings.

Again! He came forward with a trick in his mind that he had seen and that he had once playfully practised on Buck Osborn. Thought of it helped him to his foxy smile that was a grotesque burlesque of itself as he made it with his swollen mouth; but again!—again that steel-springed fury was on him, following him, following him, following him. Pinsent must needs use his fists to try to check its rushes; when he effected a savage blow the jar at his knuckles made him wince. Twice he went backwards round the ring—a third time and feinted a stumble as he moved his feet. It made his chance. Percival, coming too quick, ran full into him. He ducked, then drove up his head with all his force beneath the other's jaw.

The trick succeeded better than when he had seen it and marked it for future use. Jarred to the point of unconsciousness, Percival staggered back, his arms wide. At the exposed throat Pinsent drove his left fist with all the driving power his body and legs could give it; with the dull wup! of a wet sheet beaten on stone Percival went his full length and full length lay.

"Time!" throated Stingo; and at the word the facing crowds, that as one man had caught their breaths, went into two tumults of jostling figures, tossing arms, and of brazen throats before whose thunders, beating the air like thunder's self, Japhra, Ginger Cronk, Snowball White, and One Eye bent their heads as they came rushing forward.

"Time!" Japhra snarled at Pinsent. "Out of this, thou foul-play fox!"

"Out you!" Pinsent shouted. He stood over the prostrate form, breathing quick, one arm curved back as if it held a stabbing sword: "Out you! Enough o' this! Private between him an' me now. Stand out and let him up for me! Out!"

"Boss! Boss!" Japhra called, and dropped on his knees by Percival, dizzily rising on an elbow. "Boss! Boss! What's this? Order him out! Have him out!"

"Play fair!" "Fight fair!"—with cries and oaths the Stingo men pressed to the canvas, shaking fists aloft; with cries and oaths and tossing fists were answered. A Stingo man put his leg over the canvas and half his body into the ring: a leg and flushed face struck out on the other side. Then in a rush men broke across the canvas, poured into the ring, and met in two raging, foul-mouthed banks that strained about the boxers.

Boss Maddox thrust his way forward. "Ge' back! Ge' back! I'll have 'ee out the tent, every man of 'ee! Ge' back! Ge' back! By God, I'll have the lamp out!" And he fought his way back to the mast and stretched his hand to the chain that released the extinguishers upon the burners.

A Stingo and a Maddox man, catching each the other's eye as the two sides bayed and jostled, made private cause of the common brawl, and closed with clutching hands. Another pair engaged, and now another—whirled in that tossing mob, and flung the crowd this way and that in their furious grappling, like fighting tigers in a stockade breaking in pieces at their violence.

Boss Maddox's iron throat like a trumpet across the din: "The light goes! The light goes!"

It flickered; savage hands tore at the fighters, savage feet kicked furious commands; flickered again—and suddenly the immense clamour went to a cry, to a broken shout, to peace.

Pinsent pushed his way to the front. "Easy, Boss—I want that light. I've a job to finish," he said; and in the laugh that went up, added, "The boys 'll be all right." He threw his arms apart in gesture of command. "Out o' the ring!" he cried. "You're robbin' me of it. Gettin' his wits back! I'd ha' cut him out by now!"

Three parts supporting Percival, Japhra with Ginger Cronk and the rest had taken him back through the mob and supported him while they tended him.... The tumult gave him five minutes, and he was sitting up as the men returned growling to their places. He looked at Ima, crouching by him, read the entreaty in her eyes, and answered it and at the same time answered Japhra's trembling "How of it, master?" by shaking his head. "No!" he said, "No!" and felt Japhra's arms tighten about him.

Another heard him and pressed forward. It was Egbert Hunt, tears running down his face.

"You ain't going on?" he cried. "You ain't going on! Stop it, Mr. Japhra! Stop this murder!"

Japhra's left arm was about Percival's body, his right hand used the sponge. Those near him for the first and only time heard him use a coarse expression. As he were some tigress above a threatened cub, he drew Percival closer to him and turned savagely up at Egbert's pallid face. "Shut thy bloody, coward mouth!" he cried at him. "Men's work here! Quit thee, thou whelp!"

The ring was clear. Pinsent came out, sucking a fist. Percival got to his feet, stood a moment, the blood that had dripped to his chest the red badge of courage flying there—then walked forward.

Somewhere in the crowd a woman's voice shot up hysterically: "God love yer, Gentleman!" it shrilled—"Y're pluck! Pluck!"

III

That foxy one (the old men say) he come out sucking his fistses that were gone more like messy orindges than any fistses ever I see. He see that quick-boy rockin' a bit on his feet where he stood, an' he spit his fist out his mouth an' he run slap down at him for to knock him off his legs by runnin' into him. He run at him hard as he could pelt, that foxy one; an' that quick-boy stan' 's if he was dreamin' an' never see nothin' of him. Ah, but that quick-boy could have fought if he was asleep, I reckon me! He slip aside, squeeze aside, twist aside jus' as that foxy one reach him; so quick he twist, us what was watchin' the ground for to see him go there never see him move. I reckon that foxy one never did neither. He muddy soon knowed, though, Foxy! He go sprawlin' by, an' as he go that quick-boy clip him one an' help him go an' stumble him. Round he come, that foxy one, savage with it; an' that quick-boy dreamin' there again; an' rush him for to rush him down again; an' this time that quick-boy, too tired for to shift by the look of it, let him have it as he come fair under the eye, an' Foxy jus' swing him one on the cheek, an' that shift him like he shift hisself before; an' he clip that foxy one the other fist a clip you could ha' heard far as yonder tree; an' clip that same eye again; an' us see the blood run up into Foxy's peeper; an' that foxy one shake his head, an' shake his head, like he was blinded with it. He shake a muddy lot more, Foxy, afore he was through! He set in for to do the rushing then, like that quick-boy had done first along; an' that quick-boy's turn, dreamin' there, for to do the proppin' off. But he not rush like that quick-boy rush. He shake his head an' have a go at him; an' that quick-boy prop him off an' wait for him; an' he shake his head an' walk round a bit, an' ur! he go, an' rush at him; an' that quick-boy wake hisself an' prop him off; an' he suck his fist an' wipe his eye, an' ur! he come again: and that quick-boy twist hisself an' give him one—crack! my life, his fistses was like stones, that quick-boy's!

Ah, my word! my word! then they got at it. That old Japhra—a rare one, that Gipsy Japhra!—sing out "Cut in! Cut in! little master!" and that quick-boy gives a heave of hisself an' they meet, those two, slapper-dash! slapper-dash! this way! that way! punchin', punchin'! an' they fall away, those two, an' breathe theirselves, an' pant theirselves; an' that foxy one has his mouth all anyhow an' fair roarin' of his breath through it; an' his head all twisty-ways with only one eye for watchin' with; an' they rush those two—my life! they were rare ones! Hit as they come, those two—an' that put the stopper on it. Like stones—crack! like stones—my word on it, their fists met, an' Foxy drop his left arm like it was broke at the elbow. Then he takes it! Like a bull-tarrier!—like a bull-tarrier, my word on it, that quick-boy lep' at him. One! he smash him an' heart him, an' I see that foxy one glaze in his eye an' stagger with it. Two! that quick-boy drive him an' rib him, an' I hear that foxy one grunt an' see him waggle up his hanging arm an' drop it. Three! that quick-boy smash him an' throat him, an' back he goes, that foxy one; an' crash he goes! an' flat he lies—an', my life! to hear the breathing of him!

Life of me! there was never a knock-out like it; never one could do it like that quick-boy done it! Never no one as quick as that quick-boy when first along he come tic-tac! tic-tac! tic-tac! left-right! left-right! left-right! Never one could come again after he was bashed like that quick-boy come. Never his like! One of the rare ones, one of the clean-breds, one of the true-blues, one of the all-rights, one of the get-there, stop-there, win-there—one o' the picked!

Quivering in silence the facing crowds stood while the count went.

"Nine!" throated Stingo—scarcely a whisper.

Stillness while perhaps five seconds passed. Then Boss Maddox opened his hands towards the ring in an expressive gesture.

Then men came rushing to Pinsent and shook him: "Up, Foxy! Up!" Then Pinsent drew up his knees, groaned, and seemed to collapse anew. Then, then the storm burst in a bellow of sound, in a rush of figures. All, all of clamour that had gone before—of exultation, hate, defiance, blood-want, rage—seemed now to bind up in two clanging rolls of thunder that in thunder went, in thunder thundered back, and thundered on again. Percival turned and saw Japhra running towards him, an arm's length in advance of the mob that followed. He fell into Japhra's arms, felt himself pressed, pressed to Japhra's heart, heard in his ears "Never thy like! Son of mine, never thy like!" He knew a driving mob behind his back, before, and all about him—heard curses, grapplings, blows. Heard Japhra's cry "Up with him! Up!" felt himself borne aloft and dimly was conscious that his bearers were staggered this way and that by the flood that surged about them.... Sudden darkness, and sudden most delicious air and sudden most delicious rain was his next impression—they had got him outside the tent.... At his next he was in the van, on his couch, smiling at those who bent above him.

CHAPTER VI

THE STICKS COME OUT—AND A KNIFE

"How dost thou go?" Japhra asked.

"Why, my face is sore," Percival said—"sore! it feels as if I had only a square inch of skin stretched to cover the lot. I'm right as rain otherwise. That was a fight, Japhra!"

"Never its like!" Japhra answered him huskily—"never its like! Thou art the fighting type, my son. Long ago I said it. This night hath proved me!"

Percival sighed most luxuriously. Pleasant, pleasant to be lying there—bruised, tired, sore, but weariness and wounds bound up with victory. He put up a hand and took Ima's fingers that touched his face with ointment. "That's fine, Ima!" he smiled at her. "I saw you crying. You oughtn't to have been there. Did you think I was done for?"

She shook her head; tears were still in her eyes.

"Well, it's over now," he said affectionately. "Dry those eyes, Ima!"

She gave a catch at her breath. "Well, I am a woman," she told him, and her gentle fingers anointed his face again.

Their caress assisted him into drowsiness. Without opening his eyes he inquired presently:

"What's all that row? There's a frightful noise somewhere, isn't there?"

Japhra, who was looking through the forward window into the early dawn of the summer morning, turned to Ima and shook his head. She took his meaning and answered Percival: "It rains heavily. There is a storm coming up."

He dropped into slumber.

But the noise he had heard was heavier than the rain that streamed upon the van's roof; there raged outside a fiercer storm than the thunder-clouds massing up on the wind. It had been many seasons brooding; it was charged to the point of bursting when the two factions came shouting from the marquee after the fight. Swept up with arrogant glee, the Stingo men paraded with hoots and jeers before the Maddox vans. A stone came flying through the gloom and cracked against a tall man's cheek. He stooped for it with a curse, sent it whistling, and the crash of glass that rewarded his aim was the signal for a scramble for stones—smashing of windows, splintering of wood.

There came a wild rush of men from behind the Maddox vans. Japhra, watching from his window, turned swiftly and took up the stout limb of ash he commonly carried. He gave it a deft twirl in a tricky way that spoke of the days when single-stick work figured at the fairs, and looked at Ima with his tight-lipped smile.

"The sticks are out!" he said grimly. "I knew it would end thus;" and as he opened the door and dropped to the ground there came to him from many throats the savage cry—glad to the tough old heart of him that once had told Percival, "Ay, a camp fight with the sticks out and the heads cracking is a proper game for a man"—of "Sticks! Sticks!"; and one that came running past him toward the press shouted to him: "Japhra? Good on yer! The sticks are out! The ——s ha' come at us with sticks!"

It was Snowball White. "This way with it, boy," Japhra told him as they ran. "Thy stick thus—with a hand at each end across thy head. Crack at a pate right hand or left when thou seest one—then back to overhead to guard thine own again. I have been out with the sticks. I know the way of it."

III

Weight of numbers had told their tale when Percival got a glimpse of the fierce work.

"I'm fit—I'm absolutely fit, I tell you!" he had told Ima when, awakened by the sounds that now had raged close to the Stingo vans, and recognising them for what they were, he had shaken off her protests and entreaties and had come to the scene.

"Lie here while they're fighting us! Why, you'd be ashamed of me, you know you would!" he had cried; but when he was outside, and had gone a few steps in the rain that now was sheeting down, he was informed how weak he was, and was caught and spun dizzily back by a sudden mob of men driven towards him, and was held dizzy and fainting by the panting breaths and by the reek of sweating bodies that wedged him where he stood.

He was packed in a mob of his Stingo mates, half of whom could not free their arms for use and about three sides of whom the Maddox mob were baying, driving them further and further back against the vans with sticks that rattled on sticks and on heads like the crackling of trees in a wood fire. Two forms, taller than the rest, upstood clearly—near Percival old Stingo, hatless, blood on a cheek, and throating "Hut! Hut, boys! Hut!" with each stroke he made; further away Boss Maddox, pale, grim and iron of countenance as ever even in this fury, and using his long reach to strike with deadly precision at heads half a dozen men in front of him.

The two were working towards one another, Percival could see, and a sudden surge of the crowd brought him almost within reach of Boss Maddox's stick. It was at that moment that he felt a jostling at his ribs as of someone burrowing past him from behind, looked down and recognised Egbert Hunt—shut in by accident and trying to escape, Percival guessed.

"Hullo! You're going the wrong way to get out," he told him.

Egbert Hunt thrust up and filled his lungs as a diver might rise for air. He peered in the direction of Boss Maddox, and went down again. "I know which way I'm going," he said, and squirmed ahead—feeling and thrusting with his outstretched left hand, his right in the pocket of his coat.

Stingo and Maddox met. Each stood high above those about them and each had a cry of challenge for the other as their sticks joined. "Hut!" grunted Stingo and slashed to Boss Maddox's shoulder.

Percival saw the stick caught where it had slipped from its mark and gone into the press; saw Boss Maddox shake himself for freer action and the crowd give way from about him; saw him swing up his arm and poise his stick a dreadful second clear above Stingo's unprotected head—then saw him give an awkward stagger, saw the raised stick slip down between his fingers, heard him grunt and saw him drop down and disappear as a man beneath whose feet the ground had opened.

There arose almost simultaneously, high above the din of sticks and oaths, a scream of shocking sound and horrid meaning—"A knife! A knife!" the scream shot up—"A knife! Some bastard 's used a knife!"

It swept across the struggling men, stopped them, and was cried from throat to throat as though through the night there jarred some evil bird circling with evil cry: "A knife! A knife! Some one's knifed!"

And then again that first voice screamed: "Boss Maddox's knifed! The Boss is murdered!"

And another, most beastly: "Christ! it's pourin' out of 'im. Boss! Boss! 'Oo's done it on yer?"

And a third: "Boss! Boss! God ha' mercy!—he's dead! dead!"

And one that sprung up in panic and smashed a panic blow at the man behind him: "Dead! Dead! Gi' us room, blast yer!"

And one that sprung upright, held in his hand aloft that which caught the dull morning gleam, and screamed "Here y'are! Here's what done it! Blood on the haft!"

A thud of hoofs broke into the silence in which the crowd stood held. A jingle of accoutrements; a sharp voice that called: "What's up? What's wrong here? Who called murder?" a breaking away right and left of the mob; and into the lane instinctively formed to where the body lay a mounted constable rode, pulled up his horse and cried again: "What's up? What's wrong here?"

He was answered. Scarcely the fearful whisper "Police! Police!" had run to the outskirts of the crowd, when one that had knelt sprung raving to his feet, tossed aloft two hands dark with blood, and shouted: "I called murder! There's murder here! Boss Maddox 's got a knife in him!" His shouting went to a scream: "One o' they's done it!" he screamed. "One o' they! One o' Stingo's bastards!"

There had been mutterings of thunder and swiftly gathering darkness that submerged the summer morning's gleam. Tremendous upon that accusing scream there now broke out of heaven great reverberating rolls of sound as of heaven demanding answer to that cry. The sheeting rain burst with a torrent's fury—a great stab of lightning almost upon the very camp; then pitchy black and thunder's roll again.

To the Stingo crowd it gave the last effect to the mounting panic that had mounted in them on successive terrors of "A knife!" "Boss Maddox's knifed!" "Boss Maddox 's dead!" "Police! Police!" and "One o' they! One o' they! One o' Stingo's bastards!"

Murder had been done. The Blue Boys were out. With one of their own number lay the guilt. There cried to them "Away! Away!", all the instinct that, since first law came on the land, has bade roadmen, gipsies, outlaws, take immediate flight from trouble. "Away!" it screamed; and by common impulse there was a break and a rush to their vans of the Stingo men; and in the pitchy blackness and in primeval shudder at every roll of thunder, drenched by the streaming downpour, lit as the lightning snatched up the cloak of night, there were panic harnessing and panic cries: "One o' us! One o' us done it! D'yer see the Blue Boy on his 'orse?—more of 'em coming! 'Old still!—still, blast yer! Up wi' that shaft!—up! Hell take this buckle! Are yer fixed? One o' us! One o' us!"

A van, speedier ready than its neighbours, rolled off, its driver flogging the horse from the forward platform. A blinding torch from heaven flamed down about it. The constable, giving directions by the prone figure—"He's not dead; knot those scarves together; lift, and bind 'em so"—shaded his eyes from the glare; then jumped for his horse. "Stop that van! None's to leave here! Stop 'em! stop 'em!"

Away! Away!—thundering hoofs; rocking wheels; a van overturned, and groans and curses; pursuers driven down or smashed at where they climbed the steps; the constable surrounded by those who ran beside the van he followed, dragged from his saddle, hurled aside, and his horse sent galloping.

Away! Away!—blindly into the night.

And in the night, two miles afield, one that ran with streaming face and labouring chest and that muttered "I done it on 'im—me, served like a dog before 'em all—I done it on him, the tyrang!"

Percival was changing his dripping clothes. Complete exhaustion had him. The bruises on his face had hardened to ugly colours, and Japhra, chiding him for having left the van, saw with concern an uglier colour yet that burned behind the bruises and whose cause made his wet body burning to the touch.

"Bed for thee!—no changing!" he said; and was answered by Percival: "Japhra! I saw him pitch and drop!"

"I have helped bear him to his van.... I saw him struck."

There had never left Percival's mind him that went thrusting past in the press, right hand in pocket. His eyes questioned Japhra and were answered by Japhra's. Then he said, "Egbert Hunt?"

"Egbert Hunt."

"What's going to happen now, Japhra?"

Strange how tricks and chances go! All that day's chain of tricks, all its train of chances, had brought Percival straight to the import of Japhra's words.

"This night hath ended this life, master. Stingo sells his stock and back to his brother near thy home. To-morrow, new roads for me."

Percival scarcely heard him. Japhra made an exclamation and caught him in his arms.

"Ima!"

She came from where she had waited behind her curtain.

"Help me here—then to Boss Maddox's van where they bring a doctor. This night hath struck down this heart of ours."

CHAPTER VII

JAPHRA AND IMA. JAPHRA AND AUNT MAGGIE

The van brought Percival back to Aunt Maggie.

Japhra and Ima, waiting the doctor's arrival, watched and tended the signs of how, as Japhra had said, the night had struck Percival down. From the moment of his collapse in Japhra's arms, his vitality no longer withstood the strain to which it had been pressed. His mind gave way beneath the attack of the events of the past hours; marshalled now by fever's hand they returned to him in riot of delirium. "Don't, Ima! Don't! ... No! No! I'm all right! I'm better standing! ... Only a kiss in fun, Ima! O God, if I had only known! ... Murdered! Where's Hunt? Murder! Poor old Hunt! ... In-fighting! I must get in! If only I can stick out this round! ... Ge' back! Ge' back! What's Boss Maddox yelling about? ... In!—I must get in! I will get in! ... Ima! For me! O God, what a thing to happen! Only in fun! Only in fun, Ima! ... Follow him! Follow him! I must get in at him...."

When he was momentarily in silence Japhra looked a question at Ima.

She answered quite simply: "I told him that I loved him."

"And he?" Japhra said.

She arranged the bedclothes, and with a fond touch smoothed back Percival's hair; then looked at her father and smiled bravely and shook her head.

"I have known it these many days," Japhra told her. "I have watched thee." He placed his hand on hers where it caressed Percival's forehead. "What of comfort have I for thee?" he said. "My daughter, none. He is not of us. Hearken to this thought, Ima. Heaven shapeth its vessels for the storms they must meet. Some larger thing calleth that grace of form and that rareness of spirit that he hath. What profit then for us to sorrow?"

Because he saw her crying, he repeated: "What profit?"

"Well, I am a woman," she said. "My love is of a different sort from thine."

He stroked her hair. "My daughter, wouldst thou unlive the past?"

She replied: "Nay, it is all I have."

"So with me," he said. "This night endeth it. Thou and I—henceforward we will be alone, remembering him—happy to have loved him, happy that he hath been happy with us, happy to have been a port where he hath fitted himself a little for what sea he saileth to."

She pressed her father's hand. "As thou sayest," she said; and after a moment, bending over Percival like some mother above her child: "What awaiteth him?" she asked.

"Some strong thing," Japhra said. "I know no more—that much I know without mistake. From the first when he came to us with his quaint ways and fair face I knew it. A big fight, as I have told him."

As if she believed her father to have divination, "Will he win?" she asked him.

"He is the fighting type," Japhra replied. "Victory for him. This night in the tent. To-morrow—whatever will. Though it be death—always victory."

She remembered that.

The doctor, when he came, showed himself a tough gentleman—abrupt of speech, of the type that does its rounds in the saddle—who said "Stiff crowd, you! Regular hospital here. Cracked head in every van. Boss Maddox—he's in a bad way. Now this young man. Make me fortune if you stop."

After examination: "Nursing," he said; "it's a case for nursing. He's gone over the mark. Head—and hands, by the look of 'em! Not my business that. Stiff crowd, you! Nursing. You'll have to watch it pretty sharp. That girl's got a way with him. That's what he wants."

"I am taking him home," Japhra said; "two days from here—if that be wise."

"Wisest thing. Get him out of this. Stiff crowd, you! I'll look in again midday. Send you some stuff. Then you can move. He's badly over the mark. Look after him."

Thus, on the afternoon of that day, the train of tricks and chances had Percival on the road towards Aunt Maggie and Burdon village. The police, who had taken authority in the camp, made no objection to Japhra leaving. They knew now the man they wanted; half the Maddox crowd had heard Hunt's threat to stick a knife in Boss Maddox; the blade found was scratched with his name; a score had seen him edging through the press towards the Boss; there were not wanting those who, their imagination enlarged by these hints, had seen the very blow struck. Japhra might go, the police said, and Stingo Hannaford too. The only wanted vans were those in flight that might have the fugitive in hiding. So, while Boss Maddox, removed to the Infirmary, lay between life and death, while the Blue Boys from the police station and the tough boys from the vans scoured the country in thrill of man-hunt, Japhra harnessed up the van and struck away towards Burdon.

The patient ranged wide in his delirium during the journey—often on his lips a name that once had fallen about him like petals of the bloomy rose, sweet as they; that now struck like blows in the face at her who ceaselessly watched him:

"I know this house! Up the stairs! down the stairs! I'm tired, tired! What am I looking for? What am I looking for? Not you, Dora!—not you! ... You are Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! I love you, Dora! Why do you look at me so strangely, Mr. Amber! ... Rollo! Rollo, old man!—Rollo, what are you doing? She is running away from me! Let me go, Rollo! let me go! ... In-fighting! I must get in! I will get in! ... Dora! Dora! How I have longed for you!..."

She that watched him appeared to have a wonderful influence over him. Of its own force it seemed to give her the quality of entering the wanderings of his mind and satisfying him by answering his cries.

"In-fighting! In-fighting!" he would cry. "I must get in! I will get in!"

And she: "You are winning! There—there; look, you have won! It is ended—you have won!"

"You are Snow-White-and-Rose-Red! Dora! Dora! My Dora!"

And she, steeling herself: "I am here, Percival! Your Dora is here! Hold Dora's hand! There, rest while I stay with you!"

So through the hours.

"Post Offic" was the evening of the second day distant. Japhra walked all the way, leading the horse—movement steadier, less chance of jolting, by leading than by driving, Japhra thought; and so trudged mile on mile—guiding away from ruts, down the steep hills holding back horse and van by force amain rather than use the drag that would have jarred noisily. For the rest he walked, one hand on the bridle, the other in his pocket, his whip beneath his arm, not with the keen look and alert step that was his usual habit, but with some air that made kindly folk say in passing: "Poor gipsies! They must have a hard life, you know!"

But it was that each step brought him nearer end of a companionship that had gone with deep roots into his heart that made life for the first time seem hard to this questioner.

He would not smoke. "The reek would carry back on this breeze and through the windows to him," he told Ima, come beside him while her patient slept.

She could never remember seeing her father without his pipe, and she was touched by his simple thought. She slipped her hand into the pocket of his long coat where his hand lay, and entwined their fingers. "Ah, we love him, thou and I," she said.

She felt his fingers embrace her own. He asked her quietly: "My daughter, is it bitter for thee when he crieth Dora?"

She answered him with that poor plea of hers. "Well, I am a woman," she said. But after a little while she spoke again. "Yet I am glad to suffer so," she told him. "Though he cries Dora, it is my hand that soothes him when he so cries. He sighs then, and is comforted. It is as if he wandered in pain, and wanted me, and finding me was happy. Well, how should I ask more? Often—many years I have prayed he should one day be mine, my own. It is not to be. But now—for a little while—when he cries and when I comfort him, why, my prayer is vouchsafed me. Mine then—my own."

III

Aunt Maggie saw that wonderful influence Ima exercised over his delirium. When Japhra had carried him up to his bedroom, and when Ima was bringing "his things" from the van, he broke out in raving and in tossing of the arms that utterly alarmed her and Honor, their efforts of no avail. She called in panic for Ima. Ima's touch and voice restored him to instant peace. "You must stay with me," Aunt Maggie said, tears running down her face. "My dear, I beg you stay with me. You are Ima. I know you well. He has often spoken of you. Oh, you will stay?"

Afterwards Aunt Maggie went down to thank Japhra for his agreement to this proposal. He would put up his van with the Hannafords, he told Ima—with Stingo, who would shortly be coming, and with Mr. Hannaford—and would stay there, whence he might come daily for news while Ima remained with Percival.

Aunt Maggie had grateful tears in her eyes when she thanked him. These, and those tears of panic when she called Ima's aid, were the first she had shed since suddenly the van had brought her Percival to her an hour before. Trembling but dry-eyed she had gone to him and seen his dangerous condition; shaking but tearless had made ready his bed.

"Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? It was fate had ordered him back to her, she told herself. Almost upon the eve—within four short months of the twenty-first birthday for which she had planned—he was brought back; and brought back, despite himself, by an agency stronger than his own strong spirit. Fate in that!—the same fate that by Audrey's death-bed had assured her that nothing would fail her, and that by a hundred seeming chances had justified its assurance through the years.

He was very ill. She was not afraid. Fate was here—and she told Japhra he would recover.

She found him in the van, his pipe alight again and staring in a dullish way at the vacant places whence Percival's belongings had been removed. He came down to her, and when she told him her belief he had a strange look and a long look into her eyes before he answered. He had marked the tearlessness that went curiously with her devotion when he had brought her to Percival; he marked now some strange appearance she had for him and some strange note in her voice when she told him "He will recover."

"Ay, mistress," he said. "Have no fear. He will recover."

For her own part she marked also some strange look in the strangely strong eyes that regarded her.

She asked "But why are you so confident?"

He noticed the "But." "Mistress, because his type is made for a bigger thing than he has yet met."

To that—meeting so strongly the truth she knew—she replied: "Yes!—yes!"

At her tone he came a sudden step to her. "Mistress, is it in thy hands, this thing he must meet?"

She, by the influence of this meeting, stood caught up and dizzy by return to her in dreadful violence of that old fluttering within her brain.

Japhra in stern and sudden voice: "Beware it!"

He thought her eyes questioned him and he answered them: "Why have I from the first known some big thing waited him?—it was somehow told me. Why beware?—I am somehow warned."

She turned and began to go away. Come out of the fluttering, she could not at once recall what had passed between her and this little man.

Japhra put a quick hand on her arm: "Mistress, beware lest thou betrayest him!"

She remembered that.

CHAPTER VIII

A COLD 'UN FOR EGBERT HUNT. ROUGH 'UNS FOR PERCIVAL

Ima's nursing, as that doctor had said, brought Percival back from where he had been driven beyond the mark by stress of events and put him firmly afoot along the road of convalescence. Only one circumstance arose to distress those days of his returning strength—the news of Egbert Hunt.

The assizes at Salisbury followed quick on the capture of the fugitive—run to earth in a wood by the Blue Boys and the tough boys and brought back like some wild creature trapped—soaked, soiled, bruised, faint, furious, terrified and struggling, for prompt committal by the magistrate.

A newspaper reporter at the assizes wrote of him as having again that appearance of some wild creature trapped when he stood in the dock before the Judge. The case attracted considerable local interest. There was first the fact that famous Boss Maddox had narrowly escaped death at the prisoner's hand: there was second the appearance of a noble lady of the county—Lady Burdon—as witness for the defence.

Gossips who attended the trial said it was precious little good she did the fellow. His conviction was a foregone conclusion. A solicitor with an eye to possibilities who attended Hunt during the police court proceedings learnt from him that he had been in Lady Burdon's service from boyhood and (in his own phrase) promptly "touched her" to see if she would undertake the expenses of a defence. Her reply was in a form to send him pretty sharply about his business and (a man of some humour) he thanked her courteously by having her subpoeaned on the prisoner's behalf—mitigation of sentence was to be earned by her testimony to the young man's irreproachable character during his long years in her service.

It was little of such testimony she gave. Angry at the trick played on her (as she considered it), angry at being dragged into a case of sordid aspect and of local sensation, she went angrier yet into the witness-box for the scene made at her expense by the prisoner as she passed the dock. The newspaper reporter who described him as presenting the appearance of a wild animal trapped, wrote of him as having a wolfish air as he glared about him—of his jaws that worked ceaselessly, of his blinking eyelids, and of the perspiration that streamed like raindrops down his face. As Lady Burdon passed him the emotions of the public were thrilled to see his arms come suppliant over the dock rail and to hear him scream to her: "Say a word for me, me lady! Say a good word for me! Love o' God, say—" A warder's rough hand jerked his cry out of utterance, and he listened to her during her evidence, watching her with that wolfish air of his and with those jaws ceaselessly at work.

A cold 'un, the gossips said of her when she stepped down. The Judge in passing his stereotyped form of sentence made more seemly reference to her testimony.

"The evidence," the judge addressed the prisoner, "of your former employer—come here reluctantly but with the best will in the world (as she has told us) to befriend you—has only been able to show that you have exhibited from your boyhood upward the traits—sullenness of temper, hatred of authority—that have led you directly to the place where now you stand. It has been made very clear that this crime—only by the mercy of God prevented from taking a more serious form—was wilful, premeditated, of a sort into which your whole character shows you might have been expected to burst at almost any period of your maturer years. You will be sent away now where you will have leisure, as I sincerely trust, to reflect and to repent.... Five years.... You will go to penal servitude for that term."

Most wolfishly the wolfish eyes watched the judge while these words were spoken; quicker the working jaws moved, lower the poor form crouched as nearer the sentence came. As a vicious dog trembles and threatens in every hair at the stick upraised to strike, so, by every aspect of his mien, Egbert Hunt trembled and threatened as the ultimate words approached. "Penal servitude for that term"—as the dog yelps and springs so he screamed and sprung: a dreadful wordless scream, a savage spring against the dock, arms outflung.

Warders closed about him; but he was at his full height, arms and wolfish face directed at Lady Burdon. "You done it on me!" he screamed. "You might ha' saved me! You—! You—cruel—! I'll do it back on yer! Wait till I'm out! I'll come straight for yer, you an' your—son! I'll do it on—"

A warder's hand came across his mouth. He bit through to the bone and had his head free before they could remove him. "I've never had a fair chance, not with you, you—Tyrangs!—tyrangs all of yer!—tyrangs! You're the worst! God help yer when I come for yer! Tyrangs! ... Tyrangs!..."

They carried him away.

"Oh, five years!—Five years!" Percival cried when he read the news. "Poor, poor old Hunt! Five years!"

He was sitting comfortably propped in a big chair in the garden behind "Post Offic," Aunt Maggie and Ima with him, and his weakness could not restrain the moisture that came to his eyes. "Five years, Aunt Maggie! He was one of my friends. I liked him—always liked him. He was always fond of me—jolly good to me. When I think of him with his vegules and his sick yedaches! Five years—poor old Hunt!"

He was very visibly distressed. "Everybody is fond of you, dear," Aunt Maggie said sympathetically.

"That's just it!" he said—"that's just it!" and he threw himself back in his chair and went into thoughts that were come upon him and that her words exactly suited: thoughts that were often his in the days of his sickness when he lay—was it waking or sleeping? he never quite knew. They presented the cheery group of all his friends, all so jolly, jolly good to him. Himself in their midst and they all smiling at him and stretching jolly hands. But a gap in the circle—Mr. Amber's place. Another gap now—Hunt. It appeared to him in those feverish hours—and now again with new reason and new force—that outside that jolly circle of friends there prowled, as a savage beast about a camp-fire, some dark and evil menace that reached cruel hands to snatch a member to itself and through the gap threatened him. Within the circle the happy, happy time; beyond it some other thing. Life was not always youth, then? not always ardour of doing, fighting, laughing, loving? Menace lurked beyond.... What?...

But those thoughts were swept away, and fate of poor old Hunt that had caused them temporarily forgotten, by footsteps that brought up the path three figures, of whom two were colossal of girth and bright red of face—one striking at his thigh as if his hand held an imaginary stick—and one that walked behind them lean and brown, with rare bright eyes in a face of many little lines.

"Why, Mr. Hannaford! Mr. Hannaford!" Percival cried delightedly. "Stingo! Good old Japhra!—you've actually brought them!"

They were actually brought; but in the alarming company of women folk—of Aunt Maggie, of Ima, and of Honor, who now, the visit having been expected, came out with a laden tea-table—the tremendous brothers exhibited themselves in a state of embarrassment that appeared to make it highly improbable that they would remain. First having shaken hands all round the circle, colliding heavily with one another before each, Mr. Hannaford declaring to each in turn "Warm—warm—bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't!" and Stingo repeating some husky throatings of identical sound but no articulation; they then shook hands with one another; then proceeded round the circle again; simultaneously appeared to discover their mistake; collided with shocking violence; and finally relapsed into enormous nose-blowings, trumpeting one against the other, as it seemed, into handkerchiefs of the size of small towels.

It was to abate this tremendous clamour that Aunt Maggie handed a cup of tea to Mr. Hannaford, and it was without the remotest desire in the world to have it there that Mr. Hannaford in some extraordinary way found it on the side of his right hand and proceeded to go through an involved series of really admirable juggling feats with it, beginning with the cup and saucer and ending with the spoon alone, that came to a grand finale in cup, saucer and spoon shooting separately and at tolerable intervals in three different and considerable directions. It was to cover the amazement of the tremendous brothers at this extraordinary incident that Ima handed a piece of cake to Stingo, and it was the fact that Stingo had no sooner conveyed it to his mouth than he abandoned himself to a paroxysm of choking and for his relief was followed about the garden by Mr. Hannaford with positively stunning blows on the back that sent Percival at last from agonies of hopeless giggling to peals of laughter which established every one at their ease.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" from Percival. "I'm awfully sorry—I can't help it. Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Impossible to resist it: "Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!" thundered Mr. Hannaford.

"Oh, Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" shook Percival, rolling on his pillows.

"He! He! He! He! He!" came Stingo, infection of mirth vanquishing the contrariness of the cake-crumb.

"Proper good joke!" bellowed Mr. Hannaford, not at all sure what the joke was, but carried away by Percival's ringing mirth. "Proper good joke! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!"; and was chorused in gentler key by Japhra—for once—by Aunt Maggie and by Ima.

"He! He! He! He! He! Looks as well as ever he did!" choked Stingo, catching his brother's eye and nodding towards the invalid's chair; and that as masterfully turned the laughter to practical use as the laughter itself had turned dreadful embarrassment into universal joviality. It was the chance for Mr. Hannaford to cry delightedly: "Why, that's just what I was athinking, bless my eighteen stun proper if it isn't!" the chance for the tremendous brothers to overwhelm Percival with the affection and the joy at his recovery with which they had come bursting; the beginning of highest good fellowship all round, of stupendous teas on the part of the tremendous brothers, and at last of explanation of the real project they had made this visit in order to discharge.

It took a very long time in the telling. On the part of Stingo there was first a detailed account (punctuated by much affectionately fraternal handshaking) of how he positively had settled down at last—sold out of the show trade after and on account of the events in which Percival and Japhra had shared, and henceforward was devoting his entire energies to the cultivation of the little 'orse farm. There was then from Mr. Hannaford, helped by a ledger that could have been carried in no pocket but his, a description of the flourishing state at which the little 'orse farm had arrived—"Orders for gentlefolks' little carts' little 'orses apourin' in quicker'n ever we can apour 'em out"—and in which it was monthly advancing more and more; and there was finally a prolonged discussion in fierce whispers between the brothers, interspersed with loud "Don't forget that's" and "Recollect for to tell him this's."

Then Mr. Hannaford turned to Percival, struck his thigh a terrible crack with his ledger, and in a very demanding tone said, "Well, now!"

"Well, I'm awfully—awfully glad," said Percival. "It's splendid—splendid. By Jove, it really is a big thing. But what?—but what—?"

"What of it is," said Mr. Hannaford very solemnly, "that what we want and the errand for what we've come is—we want you!" He turned to Stingo: "Now your bit."

"What of it is," responded Stingo with the huskiness of a lesson learnt by heart and to be repeated very carefully—"What of it is, he's wanted you, told me so, ever since you come over long ago with his late lordship and showed what a regular little pocket marvel you was, but didn't like for to have you until I'd settled down and taken my proper place and given my consent—which I have done and which I do, never having set eyes on your like and never wanting to. Now your bit."

"What of it is," said Mr. Hannaford, bringing himself to the point of these remarkable proceedings with a thigh-and-ledger-thump of astounding violence—"what of it is, we're Rough 'Uns, Stingo an' me. All right to be Rough 'Uns when it's only little circus 'orses and circus folk you're dealing with—no good being Rough 'Uns when it's gentlefolks' little carts' little 'orses, gentlefolks' little riding little 'orses, and gentlefolks' little polo little 'orses. Want a gentleman for to deal with the gentlefolk and a gentleman for to break and ride and show for the gentlefolk. Want you—an' always have wanted you, bless my eighteen stun proper if we ain't." (Thump!)

Percival was white and then red as the meaning of all the mysterious conduct of the tremendous brothers' errand was thus made clear to him—white and then red and with moisture of weakness in his eyes: why was everybody so jolly, jolly good to him?

"Why, Mr. Hannaford—Stingo—" he began.

But the tremendous brothers raised simultaneous shoulder-of-mutton fists to stop him, and fell into hurried preparations for departure. It was disappointment they feared. "Don't speak hasty!" Mr. Hannaford thundered. "Think over it—don't say a word—keep the ledger—proper good business in it—pay you what you like—make you a partner in it—set you up for life properly to rights." He wrung Aunt Maggie's hand. "Say a word for us, Mam! loved him more'n a son ever since—"; in great emotion backed down the path taking Japhra with him; and in tremendous excitement returned to wring the hand of Stingo who, after opening and shutting his mouth several times without sound, at length produced: "Set you up for life properly to rights—more'n that, too. You're young. We're bound to pop off one day. No one to leave nothing to. Rough 'Uns. You're young. Bound to go to you in the end. Rough 'Uns—"

"O' course! O' course! O' course!" joined Mr. Hannaford, wringing Stingo's hand in ecstasy and wringing it still as he led him down the path. "O' course! That was a good bit. Never thought of it. Bound to pop off! Bound to go to him!"

III

"Tears in your eyes, Percival," Ima said, smiling at him as immense trumpetings at the gate announced the Rough 'Uns' departure in a din of emotional nose-blowing.

"Well, dash it all, there always are, nowadays," Percival laughed. "Everybody's so jolly, jolly good to me."

He lay back with new and most wonderful visions before his eyes; set his gaze on the dear, familiar line of distant Plowman's Ridge and peopled it with the scenes of his new and wonderful prospects. His hand in his pocket closed about letters received from Dora between that night at Baxter's and the night of the fight. Black and impossible his outlook then; limitless of opportunity now. Set up for life properly to rights! by a miracle, nay, by a chain of tricks and chances—and he ran through the amazing sequence of them—he suddenly was that! Dora no longer immeasurably beyond him; Snow-White-and-Rose-Red possible to be claimed.

Aunt Maggie broke into his thoughts. "Are you glad, dear—about the Hannafords?"

"Glad! Aunt Maggie, I was just thinking I seem to be a sort of—sort of thing for other people's plans. Old Japhra planned a fighter of me and, my goodness! I had a dose of it. Here's old Hannaford always been planning to have me with him, and here I am going sure enough!" He laughed at an almost forgotten recollection. "Why, even you—even you had a wonderful plan for me. Don't you remember? I say, it's in hot company, your plan, Aunt Maggie. All come out right except yours. You'll have to hurry up!"

"Mine will come out right," she said.

CHAPTER IX

ONE COMES OVER THE RIDGE

"Mine will come out right." But Percival's twenty-first birthday, that was to have seen the consummation of Aunt Maggie's plan, came—and Aunt Maggie held her hand and let it go.

A double reason commanded her. Percival's coming of age arrived with the Old Manor closed and Rollo and his mother far afield on that two years' travel which Lady Burdon had long before projected for her son to introduce his "settling-down." It were an empty revenge, Aunt Maggie thought, that could be taken in such case; robbed of its sting, sapped of all its meaning, unless it were delivered to Lady Burdon face to face, as face to face with Audrey she had struck Audrey down.

That was one reason that found Percival's twenty-first birthday gone, and still the blow not struck. The other was in tribute to the fate that had carried forward Aunt Maggie's plan through many hilly places and that, fatalistic, she dared not hasten when the promised land drew into sight. When she heard during the three months of Percival's zestful life on the little horse farm leading to his birthday that Rollo, before that birthday dawned, would be shipped and away on his leisurely journey round the world, she was at first strongly tempted to make end of her long waiting; at last to Audrey's murderer send Audrey's son. Her superstitious reliance on fate prevented her. With fate she had worked hand in hand through these long years. Vengeance had been nothing had she taken it at the outset when Audrey lay cold and still in the room in the Holloway Road. Under fate's guidance it was become a vengeance now indeed—Lady Burdon twenty years secured in her comfortable possessions; her husband by fate removed, and the blow to be struck through her cherished son; a friendship by fate designed suddenly to turn against her and drive her forth as she had driven Audrey. Fate in it all, in each moment and each measure of it, and Aunt Maggie had the fear that now to dismiss fate and anticipate the hour that she and fate had chosen would be to risk by fate's aid being dismissed.

Fate gave her hint of it—gave her warning. She was in one moment being told by Percival of Rollo's intended departure and long absence; and seeing herself robbed, her plan for his twenty-first birthday defeated, was urging herself with "Now—now. No need to wait longer—now;" she was in the next hearing Percival's desolation at the thought of losing "old Rollo" for so long—of their plans for closest companionship during the few weeks that remained to them; and hearing it, was warned by the same question she once before had asked herself and dared not finish, much less answer then, and dared not finish now: "What, when I tell him, if—"

Fate in it. Fate warning her, Aunt Maggie thought. Fate threatening her. Fate had been so real, so living a thing to her, its hand so plain a hundred times, that she had come to envisage it as a personality, an actuality—a grim and stern and all-powerful companion who companioned her on her way and who now stooped to her ear and told her: "Go your own way—if you dare. Seek to take your revenge now without my aid and short of the time that you and I have planned—if you dare. Abandon me and tell him now." Then the threat: "What, when you tell him, if—"

"Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? Thus, at least, she held her hand, paying tribute to fate; thus when the birthday came, and Rollo and Lady Burdon across the sea, and empty her vengeance made to seem if she then took it, she turned to fate and asked of fate "What now?"

"Strange-like"? "Touched-like"? Again to her ear that strong companion stooped—not threatening now; encouraging, supporting....

"Why, Aunt Maggie," Percival cried, "you do look well—fit, this morning. Fifty times as bright as you've been looking these past days. Younger, I swear!"

"Well, it is your birthday, dearest," she told him.

"All very well! But every time we've mentioned my birthday, my twenty-first—even last night—you've been—I've thought it has made you sad, as if you didn't want me to have it!—growing too old, or something!"

For answer she only shook her head and smiled at him. But her reason for the stronger air he noticed in her, for her rescue from her depression of the days that led to his birthday, was that to her question of "What now?" she was somehow assured that she had but to wait, but to have a little more patience, and her opportunity would come. Fate was shaping it for her; fate in due time would present it....

Percival for his own part was also in some dealing with fate in these days. As one that is forever feasting his eyes on a prized and newly won possession, the more fully to realise it and enjoy it, so frequently in these days he was telling himself "I'm the happiest and luckiest beggar in the world!" and was marvelling at the train of tricks and chances by which fate—luck as he called it—had brought him to this happy, lucky period.

Every human life falls into periods reckoned and divided not by years but by events. Sometimes these events are recognised as milestones immediately they fall; a death, a birth, a marriage, a new employment, a journey, a sickness—we know at once that a new phase is begun, we take a new lease of interest in life; not necessarily a better or a brighter lease, a worse, maybe—but new and recognised as different. More frequently the milestone is not perceived as such until we look back along the road, see the event clearly upstanding and realise that we were one man as we approached it and have become another since we left it behind; again not necessarily a better or a happier man—a worse, maybe; and maybe one that often cries with outstretched arms to resume again that former figure. It cannot be. Life goes forward, and we, once started, like draughtsmen on a board, may not move back. Beside each event that marks a milestone we leave a self as the serpent sheds a skin—all dead; some better dead; some we would give all, all to bring again to life. It may not be.

Percival in these happy, happy months as right-hand man to the Rough 'Uns on the famously prospering little horse farm often told himself that his life had been—as he expressed it—in three absolutely different periods. He found a wonderful pleasure in dividing them off and reviewing them. Daily, and often more than once in a day, when he had a pony out at exercise, he would pull up on the summit of rising ground and release his thoughts to wander over those periods as his eyes reviewed from point to point the landscape stretched beneath him; his mind aglow with what it tasted just as his body glowed from his exercise of schooling the pony in the saddle. Three periods, as he would tell himself. The first had ended with that night when he came to Dora in the drive. Everything was different after that. Then all his life with Japhra and with Ima in the van—the tough, hard, good life that ended with the fight. The third—he now was in the third! Two had been lived and left, and in review had for their chief burthen the picture of how, as he had said during his convalescence, every one had been so jolly, jolly good to him. Two had been lived and had shaped him—"a sort of thing for other people's plans"; and what kind plans! and what dear planners! and he, of their fondness, how happy a thing!—to this third period that sung to him in every hour and that went mistily into the future whose mists were rosy, rosy, rose-red and snow-white, Snow-White-and-Rose-Red....

III

In the first few months, before Rollo and Lady Burdon took their departure for the two years' travel, he was daily, in the intervals from his work, with "old Rollo"; Dora often with them. Nothing would satisfy Rollo for the few weeks that lay between Percival's beginning of his duties with the Hannafords and his own start for the foreign tour but that they must be spent at Burdon Old Manor, nothing would please him to fill in those days but to pass them in Percival's company. He made no concealment of his affection for his friend. Men not commonly declare to one another the liking or the deeper feeling they may mutually entertain. The habit belongs to women, and that it was indulged by Rollo was mark in him of the woman element that is to be observed in some men. It is altogether a different quality from effeminacy, this woman element. Sex is a chemical compound, as one might say, and often are to be met men on the one hand and women on the other in whom one might believe the male or female form that has precipitated came very nearly on the opposite side of the division—women who are attracted by women and to whom women are attracted; and men, manly enough but curiously unmannish, who are noticeably sensible to strongly male qualities and who arouse something of a brotherly affection in men in whom the male attributes ring sharp and clear as a touch on true bell.

There were thrown together in Rollo and Percival very notable examples of these hazards in nature's crucibles. The complete and most successful male was precipitated in him of whom Japhra had said long days before: "I know the fighting type. Mark me when the years come. A fighter thou." Qualities of woman were alloyed in him who once had cried: "Men don't talk about these things, Percival, so I've never told you all you are to me—but it's a fact that I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." Strongly their natures therefore cleaved, devotedly and with a clinging fondness on the weaker part; on the bolder, protectively and with the tenderness that comes responsive from knowledge of the other's dependence.

"Men don't talk about these things—but I'm never really happy except when I'm with you." That diffidence at sentiment and that self-exposure despite it, made when Percival, off to join Japhra, seemed to be passing out of his life, were repeated fondly and many times by Rollo now that Percival looked to be back in his life again. "Hearing me talk like this," he told Percival, "it makes you rather squirm, I expect—the sort of chap you are. But I can't help it and I don't care," and he laughed—"the sort of chap I am. You don't know—you can't come near guessing, old man, what it means to me to think you've chucked all that mad gipsy life of yours that might have ended in anything, the rummy thing it was, and that kept you utterly away from me; to think you've chucked all that and are settled down in a business that really is a good thing, every one says it is, and any one can see it. It means to me—well, I can't tell you what, you'd only laugh. But I can tell you this much, that I do nothing but think, and all the time I'm away shall be thinking, of how we'll both be down here always now when I get back, and of all the things we'll do together."

They were riding as he spoke, their horses at a walk up the steady climb of the down to Plowman's Ridge from Market Roding. His voice on his last sentence had taken an eager, impulsive note, and as though he had a sudden suspicion that it was betraying an undue degree of sentiment he stopped abruptly, his face a trifle red. It was his confusion, not any excess of sentiment, that Percival—quick as of old in sympathy with another's feelings—noticed. He edged his horse nearer Rollo's and touched Rollo with his whip. "Yes, we're going to have a great, great time, aren't we?" he said. "I'm only just beginning to realise it—great, Rollo!"

The affectionate touch and the responsive words caused Rollo to turn to him as abruptly as he had broken off. "I've planned it," Rollo said. "I'm forever planning it. When I get back—fit—I'm going to settle down here for good. I loathe all that, you know," and he jerked his head vaguely to where "all that" might lie, and said, "London and that kind of thing. I'm going to take up things here. I've never had any interests so far. My rotten health, partly, and partly not getting on with people, and I've let everything drift along and let mother make all the programmes. That's how it's been ever since you went off. Now you're back again and I'm keen as anything. I'm going to work up all this property, going to get to know all the people intimately and help them with all sorts of schemes. Going to run my own show—you know what I mean, no agent or any one between me and the tenants and the land. And you're going to help me—that's the germ of it and the secret of it and the beginning and the end of it."

Percival laughed and said: "Help you! You won't want any help from me. I can see myself touching-my-hat-to-the-squire sort of thing as you go hustling about the country-side."

But Rollo was too serious for banter. "You know what I mean," he said. "And you—you're going to be a big man in these parts, as they say, the way you're going, before very long."

They had gained the Ridge and by common consent of their horses were halted on the summit. Rollo turned in his saddle and pointed below them. "Percival, that's what I mean," he said, and carried his whip from end to end along the Burdon hamlets. "That's what I think of. Look how peaceful and remote it all looks, shut away from everything by the Ridge. We two together down there, planning and doing and living—"

Percival's gaze had travelled on from Burdon Old Manor where the whip had taken it and over the Ridge into the eastward vale. He turned again to Rollo, recalled by the stopping of his voice; and Rollo saw his strong face bright and said: "You'll think me a frightful ass, you'll think me a girl, but you know I get quite 'tingly' when I anticipate it all. And not want your help!—Why, only look at that for instance," and he laughed and put his hand against Percival's where it lay before his saddle. The delicate white, the veins showing, against the strong brown fist was illustration enough of his meaning. "And you're not long out of an illness that would have outed me in two days," he said.

He saw the bright look he had observed shade, as it were, to one very earnest. The symbol of their two hands so strongly different quickened in Percival the appeal that he always felt in Rollo's company, that went back to the early years of their play together, that was vital part of this happy, lucky period, and that was warmed again in the thoughts that came to him as he had looked over the eastward valley. "Why, Rollo," he said earnestly, "it is good to think of. It is going to be good. We two down there. It's wonderful to me how it's all come out. It makes me 'tingly,' too, when I think of it—and of what it's going to be. Help you—why, we two—" He pressed the brown fist about the delicate hand. "There!—just like this good old Plowman's Ridge that shuts us off from everybody! Nothing comes past that to interfere with us."

They were a moment silent, each in his different way occupied by this close exchange of their friendship; and Rollo's way made him almost at once put his horse about, concerned lest his face should betray his feelings, and made him say with an attempt at lightness: "No, nothing, with the good old Ridge to shut us off," and then, "Is that some one riding up from Upabbot?"

The direction was that where Percival's gaze had been. "Yes, it is," Percival said. "I thought so. She's coming up. It's Dora."

CHAPTER X

TWO RIDE TOGETHER

Often in these weeks the three rode together; seldom Percival and Dora met out of Rollo's company. Brief moments while they waited him, brief moments when he rode ahead of them, these were the most frequent of their intimacies; more rarely came chance half-hours, and most rare of all half-hours planned when she admitted they could be contrived. He suffered nothing that their meetings should be thus fugitive and at caprice, in main, of Rollo's moods and movements. That none as yet should know their secret ministered to rather than chafed his ardour; that, when their eyes met, their eyes spoke what in all the world only they two knew, was of itself as darling a thing as when to all the world she should be known for his alone. Then she would be his own, but their secret the price of it; now he might not claim her, but ah, their secret, theirs!

So secret it was, and she so much her rare and chaste and frozen self, that even between them it was hardly spoken. He never had lost his first awe and wonder at her beauty; and it filmed all his intercourse with her and all his thoughts of her as with a gossamer veil that, forbidding rough movements, forbade him touch her with the close words of his passion that might bruise her or give her alarm. More by signs than ever by words they spoke their secret. Words carried them over the passing subjects that any might discuss; signs revealed the secret that was theirs alone. When they met the faintest deepening of her colour shades would show it, when they parted came a last glance and again those shades would glow; when he sometimes touched her hand, her hand would stay and speak it; when he sometimes held her eyes, ah, then their secret stirred! In those few half-hours when alone they came together, meeting near the Abbey, riding through the lanes, then with none to see them he would hold her hand and feel it tell him of their secret while their lips told empty words.

It was in these weeks, indeed, that he came to know he found it a little hard to make conversation with her. That something of her character was manifested in this difficulty he had no suspicion, nor that in his solution of it her disposition was clearer yet revealed. He found she was not greatly interested to hear of himself; then found her most alert, and oftenest brought the little laugh he loved to hear, the deepening he loved to see of those strange shades of colour on her cheeks, by speaking to her of herself, or listening while of herself she told him. At first he gave her glimpses of the van life with Japhra on the road; her curiosity was not aroused. Something of the famous fight he told her, and in vigorous passages of when the sticks came out, and of the wild scenes that followed the crime of poor old Hunt, whom she had known: he saw she was not greatly entertained. Later, as events ran along, he gave them to her—told her of the day when it was found that his increasing activities with the dear old Rough 'Uns made it necessary he should live over there, no longer ride daily to and fro from "Post Offic," and of how jolly, jolly good they were to him and of the funny evenings in their company; told her of the day when the Rough 'Uns had announced they thought it proper to advancement of their business that a couple of hunters should be bought for him so that he might ride to hounds and keep among the horsey folk when the hunting season opened; told her of the day when he had from Aunt Maggie the news that the affection between herself and Ima had arranged that Ima was coming to spend the approaching winter—and likely every winter—with her; all these he brought to Dora, but slowly came to see they but little took her interest.

The discovery no more gave him suspicion that she was at fault in sympathy than of itself it vexed him, as one commonly might be vexed in such a case. It was himself he blamed when, recalling how he had talked and how little had been her response, he feared that he had tired her by his enthusiasms or, as reproaching himself he termed them, his meanderings. Clumsy he called himself, inept, dull-witted; and pictured her, his darling and his goddess, his frozen, rarest, perfect Snow-White-and-Rose-Red, and hated to have blundered all his dulness on so rare and exquisite a thing. Glad, then, the finding that he could entertain her by exercise of what a thousand-fold entranced himself—by encouraging her to speak of herself, her doings, her reflections, just as in the drive in that hour when first he knew he loved her she had spoken of her school. Lightest and most prattling what she told, and light and very passing what she thought; but spoken in her quaintly precise mode of speech and in her cold, high tone, and bringing from her her cold little laugh, and on her cold white cheek lighting those flames of colour. When he watched her with others he saw her perfect face set in its strangely still, aloof expression; when she spoke with him, and spoke of herself, he was content only to listen so he might see it light and sometimes see their secret make it flame.

More than once while she so spoke and he so listened, "But I told you that," she would say; "I perfectly recollect telling you."

And he: "Well, tell me again;" and at the note of his voice she would seem to catch her breath as though some sharpness checked her breathing, and he would see their secret flutter in her eyes and see it stain its signal like a red rose on her cheeks.

It was by one definite step—not observed as such by him at the time nor any significance in it apprehended—that they passed from this stage of reserve on the matter between them and came towards its open entertainment. The afternoon following Rollo's departure with Lady Burdon on the long foreign tour marked the event, and Percival, meeting Dora by chance, was in some loss of spirits at the fact. He found her in very different case. Her mood was high. She had the air of one who has made a success or who has escaped some shadowing mischief. He could suppose no cause for such a thing or he would have said her bearing signified relief, removal of some oppression, freedom from some weight that had burdened her mind and that now, displaced, suffered her mind to run up, made her tread lighter.

"There's something different about you to-day," he told her; then, while she laughed, and while he caught more glee than commonly he knew in the little sound he loved to hear, found the exact expression for the change he saw, and named the new step in their relations—"You are as if you'd suddenly got a holiday."

"Well, it is true that I somehow feel like that," she declared, "though why I should, I am sure I cannot imagine."

Yet dimly she knew, dimly in these later days had felt closing about her the purpose of her training, and when Percival spoke of the two years—the "frightfully long time"—for which old Rollo was gone, knew it half unknowingly for the period of her holiday. Another, more freely schooled than she, had known it clearly, had questioned, revolved, examined the sudden lightness that was hers, had realised it came of freedom from constant reminder of an end that seemed to wait her, and had inquired of herself, Why then glad?—Is that end unwelcome?

It was not hers so to examine; or examining, so to realise; or realising, so to ask; nor asking, and being answered "Yes, unwelcome," to think to make resistance and crush the end before it came. Not hers whose schooling in her mother's hands had made for and had won the stifling of such processes of thought; not hers who was caparisoned and trained for certain purpose; not hers who had responded in faultless beauty and in cloistered mind. Hers, if she stretched her hands and on a sudden found that purpose walled about her, only to follow on between the walls, not to break through them; to glance at them or run them with her fingers and see them silk and proper to her life, not beat against them, find them steel behind the silk, cry "Trapped! Trapped!" and wildly beat for outlet. Hers, if she raised her eyes and saw her purposed end far down the narrow way, only to accept and move towards it, not to halt, doubt, fear; hers to glance, and know, and think it meet and proper to her life, not start and shrink, cry "No! No! No!" and seek escape while yet escape might be.

So she was circumstanced; yet there remains, be restraint never so firmly chilled into the bones, the purely primeval instinct of delight in freedom; so she was trained, but scarcely yet had recognised purpose, walls, or end. She only, as she told Percival, "somehow felt" that she had holiday, and holiday her mood in the months that went. Why she felt so, she was sure, as she said, she could not imagine; but as the butterfly, content to live among the flowers of a hothouse and never know itself prisoner, will airily toss aloft through the open door yet scarcely think itself escaped, so, content to have remained, but gaily floating free, blithe and new her mood when now they met. Less frequent their meetings, the common excuse of Rollo being denied, but ah, more fond! Fewer their secret exchanges, but ah, more dear! Holiday her mood, and fluttering she came to him, and was swinging in his ardour from her prison to his heart; from his heart to her prison, swinging in his ardour, and had no more than glimpses—transient tremors—of her prison's walls.

III

He had her engaged in such a glimpse—a little fearfully suspicious that there were walls about her—on a day when they were hunting together. Mrs. Espart changed her earlier intention of returning to town in the Autumn after Rollo and his mother had left. To encourage her position in the country-side formed part of her own share of the plans for the young people that were to crystallise when the return was made to Burdon Old Manor, and she began to centre Abbey Royal in the social round of the neighbourhood. Her daughter's betrothal to Lord Burdon, when it was done and announced, should thus, as she schemed, lose nothing that was possible to the stir it would make. She was able to use the local Hunt as a prominent part of these intentions, did not ride herself, but horsed Dora well, subscribed handsomely and was gladly taken up by the Master in her suggestion of a bi-monthly meet at the Abbey.

Thus it was after hounds that Percival and Dora were given best chance to meet. The Rough 'Uns' idea of mounting Percival for the field proved successful to them as happy to him; Dora, in pursuance of her mother's plans, had encouragement—and wanted none—rarely to miss a meet. Hounds had run far on that day when she was caught by Percival engaged in one of those transient glimpses of her state that sometimes in these days came to puzzle her. He threw her into it, and that at a moment most unlikely, for circumstances had it that she was uncomfortable and out of temper. A bold fox carried the few who could follow him—they two among them—to a point fifteen miles from the Abbey before hounds ran into him. It was late afternoon, rain falling, when Percival and Dora started to hack the long stretch home, and they were little advanced on the road, and she feeling the wet, when she pronounced her feelings by telling him petulantly: "You should not have made me come on. I would have turned back long ago."

But it had been a rare run, and he was beneath the vigour of it. "Come, it was a great run," he said. "It was worth it, Dora."

"Nothing is worth getting wet like this. You know how I hate getting wet."

She was much wetter, and would give him no words, before a new trial necessitated that she should speak again. Her saddle was slipping, she said, and when he alighted and found the girths had loosened and then that she must get down: "No, I'll try it a little farther," she told him very vexedly. "We're nearly there now. To move is hateful. The wet is touching me right through."

She gave him no answer to his "I'm awfully sorry, Dora;" but presently said: "It's no good, I must get down, I suppose."

He looked up at her as he stood to help her from the saddle.

"You're angry, Dora?"

"Well, of course I am angry."

He acted upon an impulse that swept out her temper and put her to that transient glimpse that vaguely showed her vague misgivings. He had watched her as they rode in silence, watched the rain that swept against her face run down her face that was like marble in her chill and in her loss of temper. Cold as it her eyes that met his now, and he had a sudden impression of her—all marble, all frozen snow, his darling!—that seemed to embody all his every thought of her frozen beauty and frozen quality since first he knew her, and that taxed beyond his power the restraint that frozen quality ever had set upon him. Beyond his power!—and as he brought her down he not released her, almost roughly turned her to him; and with no word almost roughly clasped her to him; and with "Dora!" kissed her wet face and held her while startled she protested; and kissed again, again, again, again.

"No, I will not let you go! No, you have been cold to me! No, you shall not go! I have never kissed you since that once I kissed you. I will kiss you now. No, I will not let you go. I love you, love you, love you!"

She bent her face away. He felt her panting in his arms and pressed her to him; and with his hands could feel how wet she was, and with his body felt her warm against him through her soaking clothes; and passion of love broke from him in words, as passion of love he pressed upon her face.

"Turn your face to me, Dora. You shall. I have endured enough. Turn your face to me—your wet, cold, sweet face that I love. Give me your lips. Give me your lips. I will kiss your lips and you shall kiss me. Put your arms round me. Dora, put your arms round me. Now kiss me, kiss me— Ah! I love you, I love you—my darling, my beautiful, my Snow-White-and-Rose-Red. Keep your arms there, Dora, Dora, my Dora!"

His voice had run hoarse and broken in his passion; now, when obedient she gave him her lips, obedient clung to him—her will, her physical discomfort and her natural impassivity burnt up as in a flame by this sudden assault—deep his voice went and strong:—

"That is all done now—all those days when I have been afraid to touch my darling, afraid to tell her every hour, every moment, how I love her for fear of frightening her. You are in my arms, my darling, and I can feel my darling's heart, and those days can never come again. You shall remember when you see me how I have held you here. You shall remember how you lie in my arms and that they hold you strongly, strongly, and that it is your safe, safe place. Look up at me! Ah, ah, how beautiful you are—your eyes, your lips, your cold, sweet face with the rain all wet on it. Kiss me! Ah, Dora—we were meant to meet, meant to love."

She answered him more by the abandonment with which she lay in his arms than by the faltering sentences in which she sometimes whispered while they stood there. She was whispering, "I never meant you should think I was afraid. Percival, I never meant you should think I did not want to speak about our love. Only—" when she shivered violently, and he chid himself for keeping her there, and for warmth's sake, he leading the horses, they walked the last mile to the Abbey. Ardently then he talked to her of future plans. He told her that late in the next year it was arranged he was to go out to the Argentine with some ponies. A big business was like to be established there, arising out of a sale to a South American syndicate, and he was to arrange it and to select and bring back ponies of a native strain for the development of a likely type. When he returned—"This is why I am telling you, darling,"—the good old Rough 'Uns had declared he should formally be made partner in what had now become a great enterprise. "I shall claim you then, my darling. I shall be able to claim you then."

She surprised him—and, not aware of her reason, thrilled him—by halting suddenly and clasping his hands that had been holding hers. "Oh, don't leave me, Percival! Percival, don't go away!"

He kissed her adoringly. "Do you love me so?"

She clung to him and only said: "Don't leave me, Percival. Percival, you must not," and while he sought to soothe her plea—and still was thrilled to hear it—suddenly went into a tempest of weeping, changing his tender happiness to tenderest concern.

"Dora! Why, what is it? What is it, my darling? Tell me, tell me—ah, don't, don't cry, don't tremble like that."

She had not controlled herself to answer him when sound of wheels came down the road, lamps through the gloom. She checked herself, and was at her horse's head when there drew up a carriage sent from the Abbey to meet her and bring her back in shelter from the rain. A groom took her horse and, standing by the door as she entered, prevented explanation she might have made—had she been able to explain.

Had she been able—for the thing that caused her sudden tears and sudden plea was no more than a glimpse, one of those transient glimpses of the walls, of the purpose, of the end of her training; differing from other glimpses that sometimes came in that it caught her unstrung. If it flickered again in the weeks that followed, it little more disturbed her than sudden shadow across the garden disturbs the butterfly passing among the flowers; a flicker of misgiving, a vague disturbance—gone. The year's end took her away with her mother to town. Succeeding Autumn that brought them back started Percival to the Argentine.

"I just miss everybody by going by this boat," he told Aunt Maggie, sitting with her far into the night before his departure. "There's Ima coming to you to look after you till I get back and not coming till next week, so I just miss her; and old Japhra bringing her, so I miss seeing him too; and then"—he paused for the briefest moment—"there's Dora and her mother staying another fortnight abroad so I miss them; and old Rollo and Lady Burdon due next month—I miss them all. It's the rottenest luck."

"They'll all be here for you when you get back," Aunt Maggie said.

He paused again before he spoke. "Yes. That's where my luck's going to be dead in. I could tell you something, Aunt Maggie," and he laughed. "But I won't—yet. My luck—look here, tell old Japhra this from me; tell him I'm coming back for—he'll understand—the Big Fight, and going to win it!"

CHAPTER XI

NEWS OF HUNT. NEWS OF ROLLO. NEWS OF DORA

The great Argentine trip—an affair of so much consequence in its bearing on the development of pony-breeding as to attract the attention of the "Field" in a series of articles that spoke in highest terms of "Messrs. Hannafords' well-known establishment" and of "the far-reaching effects of their new enterprise"—occupied six months. Six weeks—or days—they seemed to Percival as they fled on the novelty and the busy interests that attended him while in South America. Six years he found them on the long voyage home in the steamer that brought him and the purchases from native stock of whose blood "the far-reaching effects" were to be produced; and twice and three times six years he declared to himself he seemed to have been away as, in the closing hours of an April afternoon, the train brought him in sight—at last! at last!—of homeland scenes, of Plowman's Ridge along the eastward sky.

Quite a little party was assembled on Great Letham platform to greet him. The Rough 'Uns had driven over in two separate carts—one that should carry him to Aunt Maggie and the other that should bear his luggage—and they were there, their faces to be seen afar like crimson lamps of their excitement, and Mr. Hannaford's leg-and-cane cracks rising high above the din of escaping steam in which the train drew up, and Stingo almost completely voiceless with huskiness for more than an hour back. And Stingo had brought Japhra, arrived at the little horse farm to take up Ima after her winter with Aunt Maggie; and Mr. Hannaford had brought Ima, and they were there—Japhra with his tight mouth twitching, and deep in his puckered face his bright little eyes gleaming; and Ima, standing a shade apart, a tinge of colour crept beneath her skin, and on her lips and in her eyes her gentle smile. To complete the greeting there came shrill, ridiculous chuckles from a stout, soft gentleman, and from his sister little hops and little flutters and "There he is! He'll hit his head leaning out like that! He's browner than ever! Oh, Percival!"

And "Percival!" from them all in all their different keys, and he among them before the train was stopped, and turning from glad face to glad face, and caught up in the midst of it with a sudden wave of the old thought, like a knock at the heart, like a catch at the throat—"How jolly, jolly good they all are to me!"

Like a knock at the heart, like a catch at the throat, it took him, and checked him a moment in his responses to the congratulations and was mirrored in the flicker that went across his face. His eyes caught Japhra's and it was the look of understanding he read there, he thought, that brought Japhra to him for another word before he drove away. In the station yard the traps were waiting. "You, longside o' me—partner!" bellowed Mr. Hannaford and must shake Percival's hand again for the meaning of that word. "Up behind, Ima, my dear. We'll take partner home while Stingo leaves that box at the farm and then comes on with the rest of the luggage."

Plump Mr. Purdie and birdlike little Miss Purdie had started to walk; Stingo was throating "Come along, Japhra, come along, Japhra," in a husky whisper that no one could hear but himself; Mr. Hannaford was beginning the tremendous operation of hoisting himself up on one side of the cart while Percival, a foot on the step, was about to swing himself up on the other, when Japhra turned and came back to him.

"Thy hand a last time, master!"

"Hullo, what's this for?" Percival laughed; but saw Japhra's face grave, and went on: "You caught my eye on the platform just now, Japhra. I saw you knew how I felt. That's it, eh?"

"Something of that," Japhra answered him. "Ay, a thought of that came to me then." The note of his voice was as earnest as his eyes, and he added, "Master, there was another matter to it that I saw."

"Well, you were always the thought-reader," said Percival, and smiled at him quizzically. "What was it, Japhra?"

"That thou art out for something else than we know."

"You could see that? Well, you shall know to-morrow."

The earnest look in Japhra's eyes went deeper. "Comes it so soon?"

"A few hours, Japhra."

There came an impatient hail from Mr. Hannaford, settled at last in the trap above them.

"Well, press my hand to it," Japhra said; and as he held Percival's hand, "press—let me feel thy grip, master. Something bids me to it. Ay, thou art strong. Be strong in thine hour."

As the trap swung out of the station yard Percival saw him still standing there as though he still would speed that message. He turned about in his seat to elude Ima in his chatter with Mr. Hannaford, and they were not two miles upon the road before he was launched upon what gave him need for strength.

Strangers were rare in Great Letham. Every figure passed as they rattled through the town was familiar to Percival. The turn into the high road took them by one—a tall, straight man with something of a stiff air about him, as though his clothes were uncomfortable—that looked at them with a swift glance as they overtook him.

"Hullo," said Percival. "That's a new face. Who's that?"

"Why, that's a bit of news for you, partner," said Mr. Hannaford. "Bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't. There's two or three o' them chaps about—'tecs."

"'Tecs?—detectives? Why, what's up, Mr. Hannaford?"

"There's been an escape from Dartmoor prison. Three of 'em in a fog. And one—you'd never guess!"

"Not old Hunt?"

"Hunt sure enough, partner."

"Hunt—good lord, poor old Egbert Hunt! And those chaps? After him? Do they think he's here?"

"They didn't know what to think," said Mr. Hannaford, and with a laugh at them for their puzzlement went into explanation. A fortnight ago the escape was made, it appeared. Two caught—one shot—but Hunt still missing. Traces of him in four burglaries, and each one nearer this way, and now the 'tecs here on the belief that he was making for the country-side he knew.

Percival met Ima's eyes and saw in them sympathy with the feelings given him by this news. "I knew you would be sorry," she said.

"Sorry!—why, Ima, it's awful, it's dreadful to me to think of poor old Egbert like that. One of them shot—and he hiding, terrified, no shelter, no food. When they catch him—I know what he is. He'll be mad—do anything. They'll shoot him down, perhaps."

She touched his hand and he was moved to catch hers that touched him and saw the blood tide up into her face. He had seen much of her in the winter following his illness when she had lived with Aunt Maggie. They were brother and sister, he had told her in those days, and when he had spoken of that night on Bracken Down before the fight: "Oh, it is forgotten," she had told him. "Forgotten, and forgotten all the foolish words I spoke. Nothing in them, Percival. Yes, you are my brother. I am your sister. That is it."

And now was sister. He did not notice that she caught her breath when the blood came into her face as he took her hand, nor that she disengaged his clasp before she spoke. Only that in her gentle voice, "You must not let it upset you, Percival," she told him. "You are coming back so happy. You must not let this spoil it."

"But it does," he said. "It does. I can't enjoy myself—I can't be happy while he's near here perhaps—those brutes after him. We'll have to look out for him, Ima. You and I. He'll not be afraid of us. We'll go all round the place together. He'll come to us if he sees us."

"Yes—yes," she said, and seemed glad.

"What does old Rollo say?"

"Ah, Lord Burdon—Lord Burdon is longing to see you. Of Hunt I don't know what he says. But of you—Percival, he's longing for you. He's not been very well. He's kept to the house. He sent word how he had looked forward to meeting you at the station but could not, and begged you would go up to him as soon as ever you arrived. You must."

"Why, of course I will," Percival said, and with recollection of Rollo—and of Rollo longing for him—was temporarily removed from the gloom that had beset him and returned to the anticipation of all that awaited him.

"I will, of course. He's not ill?"

"He's ever so much stronger since he came back. Only a cold that keeps him in. He has to keep well for the festivities, of course."

Her reference was to the great twenty-fourth birthday celebrations—the coming of age according to Burdon tradition—and Percival agreed eagerly. "Why, rather! He'll want all his voice for the speeches! I was afraid once I'd not get back in time. As it is, I've only just done it. The nineteenth, next week, his birthday, isn't it?"

"Next Thursday," Ima said, smiling to see him smile again.

"Touch and go!" laughed Percival. "I might easily have missed it." He turned to Mr. Hannaford. "Mr. Hannaford, you'll have to stay a bit when we get home—have tea—and then drive me over to the Manor. We're talking about Lord Burdon and the festivities. Great doings, eh?"

"Why, great doings is the word for it," said Mr. Hannaford. "Bless my eighteen stun proper if it ain't. Everybody invited a score o' miles round. Going to roast a nox whole, marquees in the grounds, poles with ribbons on 'em from the church to the Manor—"

"From the church! What, is there going to be a service?"

"Service!" said Mr. Hannaford. "Why, how's he going to be married without?"

Percival almost jumped to his feet. "Married! Is he going to be married?"

"What, don't you know, partner?"

"I've not had letters for months. Married! Good lord, old Rollo married! Why, that's tremendous. Ima, why ever didn't you tell me? Married! Whom to?"

Mr. Hannaford was enormously pleased at this excitement. "Give 'ee three guesses, partner."

Percival cried: "Why, I couldn't guess in a thousand. It fairly knocks me. Old Rollo going to be married! Go on—tell me!"

"Go on—guess," said Mr. Hannaford.

"How can I guess? I don't know his London friends. I shan't even know her name."

"Well, you'll ha' left your memory where you left that string o' little 'orses if 'ee don't. Ever heard o' Upabbot?" He twisted round to wink advertisement of his humour to Ima. "Got any sort of a glimmering rec'lection of Abbey Royal?—why, Miss Espart!"

CHAPTER XII

PRELUDE TO THE BIG FIGHT

Percival said in a quiet voice, "Put me down. Put me down—I'm going to walk."

"So you're no hand at guessing, partner. Own up to that," was Mr. Hannaford's response. Then he cried, "Hi, what's up with 'ee? What be doing?" for Percival had stretched a sudden hand to the reins and the horse swerved sharply. "Whoa!" bellowed Mr. Hannaford, and dragged up with a wheel on the brink of a ditch. "Might ha' had us out!" he turned on Percival. "Bless my eighteen stun proper if 'ee mightn't!"

It was a wild face that fronted him, blotchy in red and white as it were freshly bruised. "Well, put me down!" Percival cried at him fiercely. "Put me down when I ask you!" and as he slowly drew the rug from his knees and put out a foot to the step he turned back on Mr. Hannaford and flamed "I suppose I can walk if I want to?" and dropped heavily to the road. His feet landed on the edge of the ditch. He blundered forward and came with hands and knees against the hedge. The stumble shook his hat from his head and he turned and went hatless past the tail of the cart and a few paces down the road.

Mr. Hannaford released with a rushing explosion the immense breath that he had been sustaining during the whole of these proceedings. He turned amazed eyes on Ima: "What's happened to him?"

She sprang to the road. "Percival!" and followed him.

He turned at the sound of her feet; and at the look on his face she stopped.

"Well?" he demanded. "Well? What is it now?"

"You have left your hat," she said. "I will bring it to you."

Some wit that came to her gave her these ordinary words in place of questioning him, and he came back to her quickly. "I don't want my hat," he told her. He looked up towards Mr. Hannaford. "I'm sorry I pulled you up like that. I want to walk, that's all. I'm going along the Ridge—to stretch my legs."

"There's something wrong with 'ee," said Mr. Hannaford. "What is it, boy?"

"Nothing. I want a walk, that's all."

Mr. Hannaford pointed across the Ridge. "There's a storm coming up. Best ride."

"I'll be home before that." He turned and went slowly towards a gate that gave to the fields approaching the downside. Ima hesitated and then went swiftly after him as he fumbled with the latch.

"Percival, I will walk with you."

He turned upon her a face from which the gentler mood was gone.

"Oh, for God's sake let me alone," he cried, and passed through the gate and left her.

He found that he kept stumbling as he pressed along.

He tried to give attention to lifting his feet but stumbled yet. He found that he could not think clearly. He tried to take a grasp of his thoughts and place them where he would have them go, but they persisted in form of words that Mr. Hannaford had spoken, in swift gleams of pictures that answered the words and then round about the words again. "Ever heard o' Upabbot?" Ah, every well-remembered street of it arose before his mind! "Got any sort of a glimmering recollection of Abbey Royal?" Ah, he could scent the very flowers banked along the drive! "Why, Miss Espart." Blankness then—some thick oppressive darkness suddenly shutting down upon him; some bewildering, vaguely sinister blanket of dread that stifled thought—then suddenly out of it and back again to "Ever heard o' Upabbot?"

The ground beneath him flattened abruptly under his feet. He stumbled more violently than before, and was jolted to recognition that Plowman's Ridge was gained. Of long habit he straightened himself to meet the wind. It suited the unreal conditions that seemed to surround him, it was a part of the dream in which he seemed to be, that something that should have been here seemed to be missing. What? He stood a moment looking dully about him. The question merged into and was lost in the circle of thought that beset him as he followed his right hand and turned along the Ridge. He had stumbled a full mile and more when there struck his face that which informed him what had been missing when first he reached the crest. Wind came against him, and he realised there had been no wind where, ever and like an old friend, wind ran to greet him. Aroused, he pulled up short. He had come far. That was Little Letham lying beneath him, Burdon Old Manor in those trees. Late afternoon gave before evening down the valley. Heavy the wind and close. He turned his head and saw against the further sky great storm clouds pressing down upon the Ridge. He raised his eyes and saw a figure come towards him, crossing the Ridge and walking fast from Little Letham, turning towards him as he gave a cry.

"Dora!"

He went forward some swift paces, the stumbling gone from his feet and his mind sprung tensely out of its dull circling; then he stopped. She too was halted. She had turned sharply about at his cry and was poised towards him where she turned. There were perhaps twenty yards between them, and the quickly deepening gloom admitted him her face whitely and without clear outline through the dusk. He did not move, nor she. There came from her to him a rattle of breeze, presage of the storm that gathered, and he saw her skirts fan out upon it. There struck his face a heavy raindrop, skirmishing before the gale, and he drew a quick breath and went forward to her—nearer, and saw her faultless face and felt the blood drum in his ears; nearer, and her clear voice came to him and he could hear his heart.

She said: "Percival!"

"Dora, I have come back."

Her face, that he watched with eyes whose burning he could feel, was as emotionless as motionless she fronted him. It might have been frozen, so still it was; and she a carven thing, so still she stood; and her eyes set jewels, so still were they. His breathing was to be heard as of one that breathes beneath a heavy load. When she did not answer—and when answered he knew himself by her silence—"There is only one thing I want to hear from you," he said. "Tell me it."

Her voice was a whisper. "Oh, must you ask me that already?"

He said stupidly: "But I have come back."

She said: "O Percival, it is a long time."

He had known her voice precise and cold—as icicles broken in a cold hand!—as was its habit and as he thrilled to hear it. He had known it faltering and atremble and scarcely to be heard when she was in his arms. Now there was a new note in it that he heard. There was a weary droop, as though she were tired. "But it is a long time," she said again. "I asked you not to leave me."

He was trembling. "Tell me what has happened."

Her reply was, "I asked you not to leave me, Percival."

"You and—" There was a name he had difficulty in saying. He turned away and went a step, fighting for it among the scenes in which her words surrounded it. Then came to her again and pronounced it. "You and Rollo. Is it true?"

"Yes, it is true."

He said brokenly: "But I have held you in my arms. How can it be true? I have kissed you and you have kissed me and clung to me. You have loved me. I have come back for you. How can it be true?"

Her face answered him. Beneath his words the crimson flamed as though in crimson blood it would burst upon her cheeks—flamed in those strange pools of colour where her colour lay, and drove her white as driven snow about them—flamed and called his own blood as flame bursts out of flame. He caught her in his arms. "You are mine! What has he done to you? Mine, mine, what has he dared?"

She struggled and pressed her face away from his that approached it. "You must not! You must not! Percival, you must not!"

"Ah, your voice, your voice tells me that you are mine!" he cried: and cried it again in revulsion of triumph over the unthinkable torment that had possessed him. "Your voice tells me!" and again in savagery of heat at a thought of Rollo, "Mine—your voice tells me you are mine!"

The colour was gone from her face. She was so white and so still in his arms that he desisted the action of his face towards her, but held her close, close. There came from her lips: "No, no! you must not. It is wrong."

"How can it be wrong? You say No, but your voice tells me. I have come back for you, my Dora."

"Ah, be kind to me, Percival."

"How should I be unkind to my darling?"

He felt a tremor run through her. "You must not call me that, Percival. It should never have been. I thought you would forget."

What, had he not triumphed then? Torment came ravening back at him again like a wild thing, and with a sudden burst and clamour, shaking him where he stood, old friend wind with that old hail—or mock?—of ha! ha! ha! in his ears. He said intensely: "You thought I would forget? While I was away you thought I would forget? Dora, you never thought it!"

She stirred in his clasp to disengage herself: "No, no—before that. When we were together."

He broke out: "Explain! Explain!" He let her from his arms and she stood away from him, stress on her face. "Oh, there is something I do not understand in this," he cried. "Explain—tell me."

She told it him. "Percival, I was always to marry Rollo," she said.

He stared at her. "How can you mean—always?"

"I should have told you. I knew it."

He pronounced in a terrible voice "Rollo!" Then he said thickly: "What, when you were with me—in those days, those days! You knew it? He had spoken to you then?"

She caught her hands to her bosom in an action of despair. "No, no!" she cried; and then, "Oh, how can I explain?" and then found the word that helped her with force of a thousand words to name her meaning. "It was—holiday," she said.

He remembered it. He remembered, and its memory came like a lamp to guide him. He said slowly, "When Rollo went—I remember you were different. Dora, do you mean it was always arranged you were to marry Rollo?"

She said, "Always—always!"

He cried, "But you loved me!"

She wrung her hands at that, and cried in the most pitiful way, "I thought you would forget. I don't know what I thought. It was holiday. It should not have been. Oh, why must we talk of it?"

"Dora, they are forcing you to marry him."

"I was always to, Percival. I was always to."

"You want to?"

"Well, I was always to."

Her voice was that of a child whose young intelligence by no means can take a lesson. Sufficient to one such that the thing is so as he sees it and cannot be otherwise; and to her sufficient—trained and schooled and cloistered for that sufficiency—that, as she said, she was always to. Ah, she had had holiday, but not enough to loose her; she had tossed among the flowers, but had fluttered home at nights. Now the mate she toyed with was knocking at her prison; she could see and could remember, but she could not fly. Quickly after the end of their months together, and very certainly after Rollo's return, she had discovered what long she had dimly seen. Clearly the purpose and the walls and the end of her training had been presented to her. Passively she had accepted them.

But how explain it? How explain what herself she did not know? She looked from night that came stealing up the valley to his face that had a shade of night. She heard the wind that now was in gusty beat against them, and above the sound could hear his breathing. She could only wring her hands and say again: "Percival, I was always to;" and when he did not answer, "Let me go now, Percival."

He answered her then. "You loved me. How can you do this? You loved me. Why did you not tell me?"

She cried as if she were distracted, "Oh, oh! I asked you not to leave me. It was a long time. You were not here."

He caught on to that. "I am here now. It shall not be. Dora, I am here now!"

"It is done," she said. "It is done!"

He seemed for the first time to realise the complete abandonment, the unresisting resignation to her fate, that was in her every word and tone. His voice went very low.

"Dora, are you going to marry him?"

"I was always to." It was the beginning and the end of her will. "I was always to." She had no question of it.

He threw up his arms in wild despair at its repetition. "O my God! What a thing to tell me! What a thing to be! Why? Why? Do you love him? Is he anything to you? Why were you always to marry him?"

She gave the reason her mother had never concealed from her. "He is Lord Burdon. It was arranged long ago. My mother—"

The sound he made stopped her. As if he had been stabbed and choked his life out on the blow, "Ah!" he cried. "That is it. Because he is what he is. If he were like me this would never have happened. If he were not what he is it would be ended."

She appealed "Percival! Percival!" wrung her hands and turned and went a step. When she looked again she saw his face as none had ever seen it, twisted in pain and dark with worse than pain. He was not looking at her, but down upon Little Letham where Burdon Old Manor lay. She approached him and spoke his name, touched him, but he did not move.

She left him there and once looked back. He still stood as she had left him.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BIG FIGHT OPENS

There had been one years before that had cried, "You are Lord Burdon!" and one that had received it, first in light mock at its folly, then in bewilderment at its truth. There was one cried the same words at "Post Offic" on this night and one, groaning in torment of spirit, that put it aside as a jest untimely, then, convinced of it, got to his feet and heard as it were the world shattering to pieces in his ears.

The gathering storm had opened and was driving along the Ridge in its first onset of rain when at last Percival turned where Dora had left him, wrenched himself about as though his feet were rooted, and brought to Aunt Maggie the dark and working face that had stared down upon the Old Manor. Ima had told Aunt Maggie of his strange behaviour when he had stopped the cart. When he arrived she was up-stairs in her room, crying a little, wanting to be alone. Aunt Maggie, Ima's fears communicated to her, awaited him alone in the parlour. He opened the door fiercely and came in dripping from the streaming night. She gave a little cry at sight of his face and rose and stretched her hands towards him. The sudden peace in here, exchanged for the buffeting of the night, reacted on the tumult of his mind and forced him to discharge it.

"O Aunt Maggie! Aunt Maggie!" he said.

"My Percival! What is it?"

He took both her hands that were extended to him; then was acted upon anew by her loving eyes, and clasped her to him and she felt sobs shaking his strong frame.

"Percival! Percival! What has happened to you?"

He let her go and dropped into a chair against the table, put his hands to his head and while she saw his shoulders heaving she saw the raindrops running through his fingers from his hair. She went before him, and stretching her arms across the table encircled his wrists with her hands. They were burning to her touch. "Percival, it is torturing to me to see you like this. Tell me, tell me!"

He took her hands. "Oh, I am in torture," he said, and she saw the torture burning in his eyes. "Aunt Maggie, Aunt Maggie, I loved Dora. I never told you. I was to tell you to-night. I had come back for her."

She felt a sense go through her as of a sword turned within her.

"But Rollo!" she said.

His hands crushed hers so that she had pain. "Yes, Rollo!" he said. "I nearly went to him to-night. I shall go yet. Rollo! Rollo! Rollo!"

He ground the name between his teeth. The pressure of his hands on hers became almost insufferable. She felt it as nothing to what shook her brain. She was back at the bedside in the Holloway Road. She was spun through the years of her waiting, waiting. She was fronted with the torments when that for which she waited had seemed to be snatched from her. There filled the room and stooped towards her the figure that she envisaged as fate, that had stayed her hand, that she obeyed, that had tried her, that had fought for her, that now was come to prove itself fate indeed.

In one part she was dizzy and overcome with the shaking at her brain; in the other she was listening to Percival and worse beset at every word. "I have seen her," he said, "I have seen her to-night. They are forcing her to this. They have arranged it for years—arranged it! Bought her and sold her because he is what he is. Aunt Maggie, she loved me for myself. He comes in! he comes in! he comes in! and takes her because he is Lord Burdon."

The shaking at her brain pitched suddenly to a tensest balance like a machine that rattles up to action then tunes to a level spinning.

"He is not Lord Burdon!" she said.

He was silent but he did not heed her.

"He is not Lord Burdon!"

At her repetition he moved quickly in his seat and relaxed his hands. "Oh, why say that? Why say that?"

"You are Lord Burdon!"

He let her hands go and pressed his own again to his head. "Can you only talk like that when you see me suffering?"

She rose to her feet. "Percival! Percival, listen to me. It is true. It is what I have kept for you these years. It is what I have meant when I told you I had something for you. You are Lord Burdon!"

He also stood. "Are you mad, Aunt Maggie? Are you mad?"

She staggered back against the wall. While he stared at her as he questioned her sanity, while she saw the look in his eyes as he asked her, there came to her with a shock of sudden fear, as to one that has released a wild and mighty thing and shudders to have done it, the words Japhra had said: "Mistress, beware lest thou betrayest him!"

He came swiftly to her and roughly caught her. "Are you mad? What is this?"

She recovered herself. "Do you know that box in your room?"

The locked box was an old joke of his. "What has that to do with it?"

"The proofs are there. You shall see."

"Show me," he said, his voice not to be recognised for any he had spoken with. "Show me!"

She steadied herself against a chair, and steadying herself by all her hand came against as she walked, went across the room to the stairs, he following. There came at that moment a loud knock upon the outer door. He went dazedly to it and stared with unattending eyes at one who stood there, the light shining on his heavy waterproof coat that streamed with rain. It was the strange man whom they had overtaken as the cart came out of Great Letham.

"The convict Hunt's been seen near by," said the man abruptly. "Me and my mates thought it right to tell the village."

Percival closed the door upon him without a word. "Show me," he repeated to Aunt Maggie, and followed her to her room.

He sat on the edge of her bed while she told him his story. He sat motionless and with his face immobile. There was only one action that betrayed he was under any emotion. His chin was forward on his hand, elbow on knee. His fingers came across his mouth, and in the knuckle of one he set his teeth. Blood was there when he drew his hand away.

She finished: "It is all here, letters, certificates. Your mother's letters, Percival, and your father's. They are all in order from the first. There is one here to his grandmother and one to his lawyer telling them of his marriage. He left those with her when he went away. Then the letters from India."

He drew his hand from his mouth, the blood on his fist. "Leave me alone," he said. "Go away, Aunt Maggie, and leave me to look at them alone."

There was that in his voice which smote terribly across her spinning brain and caused her to obey him.

III

An hour he was occupied in reading the yellowed sheets whose heritage he was; for long thereafter sat and stared upon them. These devoted lines in that round hand were his mother's: his father's those ardent passions in those bold characters; he their son. He felt himself a shameless listener to penetrate these tender secrets; he felt himself a little child that hears his parents' voices. Sometimes, in that first mood, the blood ran hotly to his cheeks; sometimes, in that second, there came sobs to his throat and great trembling. Memories of thoughts, impulses, happenings that had been strange, returned to him, crowding upon him; here was their meaning, their interpretation here. In the library with Mr. Amber, "thinking without thinking as if I was in some one else who was thinking," shadows about the room and a moth thudding the window-pane—here the secret of it! In the library with Mr. Amber and the old man's cry: "Why do you stretch your hand so, my lord?"—here the answer! In presence of death with Mr. Amber, and "Hold my hand, my lord"—here what had opened Mr. Amber's eyes. In dreams in Burdon House, and searching, searching, and all the rooms familiar, and a voice that had cried, "My son, my son! Oh, we have waited for you!"—here, here, the key to it—here that voice in those yellowed sheets—here, here, what he had searched, streaming from those papers, tingling his skin, filling his throat as though from the faded lines strong essences rushed and pressed about him. His mother!—he spoke the word aloud, "Mother!" His father!—"Father!" Their son, "I am your son!..."

Of a sudden he was returned to the present. Of a sudden he was snatched up from realisation of what had been, and what was, and pitched into battle of what was now to be. Out of a churchyard, out of a graveside where gentle thoughts arise, into the street, into the business where the din goes up! So he was hurled, and as one that gasps on sudden immersion in icy water, as one gripped in panic's hold that comes out of sleep to sudden peril, so, as he faced the thing that was come to him, he cried out hoarsely, knew horror upon him, and shut his eyes and pressed his hands against them as though his lids alone could not blind what picture was before him. In one instant fierce, fierce, exultant triumph; in the next torment that reeled him where he stood. In one instant himself that an hour before had stood looking balefully down upon Burdon Old Manor; that had cried to Aunt Maggie: "Rollo! Rollo! Rollo!" and knew it for a thrice-repeated curse; that had cried: "I was going to him! I shall go to him yet!" and knew his hands tingle and his brain leap at the thought; in the next, nay, immediate with the flash and flame of it, Rollo that from childhood's days had leant upon him; that he had brothered, fathered, loved; that had cried to him—ah, God, God! how the words came back!—"Everything I've got is yours—you know that, don't you, old man?" That had cried, "I'm never really happy except when I'm with you;" that had said, "I want some one to look after me—the kind of chap I am; a shy ass and delicate."

He dropped on the bed in the tumult of his torment. He writhed to his knees and flung himself against the bed, his fingers twisting in the quilt, his face between his outstretched arms. He had burned with fury to face Rollo and crush him down. The weapon was in his hands. Ah, ah, too strong, too sharp, too cruel! New thoughts brought him to his feet. Strongly he arose and shook himself. What, was he weakening toward a sentiment? "Everything I've got is yours"—but Dora taken from him! "Everything I've got is yours!"—it was! it was! and Dora with it! Always arranged because he was Lord Burdon! His darling sold to Rollo and bought by Rollo because Rollo was what he was! And he was not it! He was not it! This night, this hour he should know it!

This night? There came to him the vision of Rollo he had had when they told him Rollo could not come to the station to meet him but begged he would go up to him directly he arrived. He had pictured old Rollo coming to him with eager, outstretched hands. Rollo was waiting for him now, expecting him every moment, would so come to him if he went, would so come to him if he waited till to-morrow; and how would look when he spoke and told? The years ran back and answered him. There came to him clearly as yesterday that first visit to Mr. Hannaford's when he had been flushed with excitement and praise at riding the little black horse and had turned to see Rollo shrinking as he stood away, distress and tears working in his face. So he would look now. Then he had encouraged Rollo—as all through life thereafter he had heartened him. Now? Now he was to strike the appealing face that then and ever had looked to him for aid....

How do it? How do it? Why hesitate? Why hesitate? How strike him? Why spare him? How break him? Why let him go? Like live wild things the questions came at him and tore him; as one in direst torment there broke from his lips "O God, my God!": as one pursued he burst from the room, through the parlour where Aunt Maggie stretched hands and cried to him, out into the night where tempest raged and blackness was—fierce as his own, black as the thoughts he sought to race.

Out, out, as one pursued! Away, away, to shake pursuit! And caught as he ran, screamed at as he stumbled on, by all the howling pack that gathered strength and fury as he fled. His feet took the Down; full the tempest struck him as he breasted it; ah, ah, more violent the furies fought within! Thunder broke sheer above him out of heaven with detonation like a thousand guns; he staggered at the immensity of it; on, on, for furious more what joined in shock of battle in his brain! A sword of lightning showed him the Ridge and seemed to shake it where it lay. He gained the crest and turned along it and knew in his ears old friend wind in howling mock of ha! ha! ha! to see this fruitless race.

CHAPTER XIV

ALWAYS VICTORY

He came over against Burdon Old Manor and stopped and knew himself where he had stood with Dora three hours before. His exertions had run him to the end of his physical strength. He sank to his knees, and there, like vultures swooping to their stricken prey, the torments he had raced from came at him in last assault; there had him writhing on the sodden ground....

In their stress, as a hand put down to touch him where he writhed, a sudden recollection came—himself with Japhra by the van by Fir-Tree pool; Japhra with a lighted match cupped against his face and Japhra's words: "Listen to me, master. Listen to me—thy type runneth hot through life till at last it cometh to the big fight. Send me news of that. Send only 'The Big Fight, Japhra.' I shall know the winner." Ah, here was the Big Fight, saved for him, growing for him through these years and now released upon him! "I shall know the winner." He crouched lower beneath the storm, and in his inward storm buried his fingers in the sodden turf. "I shall know the winner"—ah, God, God, which was victory and which defeat? To win Dora, to take all that was his and she, his darling, with it, but against Rollo to use this hideous thing: was that victory? To lose all, all, to let his darling go, but to spare Rollo: was victory there? Was that victory with such a prize? his Dora won? Yes, that was victory, victory! Was that victory at such a price, Rollo spared, his darling lost? Could he bear to see his darling go? Endure to live and know whose son he was? Watch Rollo with his darling and keep his secret sheathed? Was victory there? No, no, defeat—defeat unthinkable, impossible, not to be borne! He sprang to his feet and another thought came at him and gripped him. Japhra again: "Get at the littleness of it—get at the littleness of it. It will pass." Ah, easy, futile words; ah, damnable philosophy! Was littleness here? Was littleness in this? "Remember what endureth. Not man nor man's work—only the green things, only the brown earth that to-day humbly supports thee, to-morrow obscurely covers thee. Lay hold on that when aught vexeth thee; all else passeth."

The Big Fight had him; in its agony he cried aloud, threw up his arms and fell again to his knees.

So Ima found him.

When he had burst from the house, when Aunt Maggie had followed him and cried after him into the night, when she had returned and for a while wrestled with fear of what she had seen in his face, she went to the little room that was set apart for Ima and in sharp agony, in dreadful possession of that "Mistress, beware lest thou betrayest him," had cried "Ima, Ima, go to him! go to him!"

And Ima, taking Aunt Maggie's hands and staring in her face, "What has happened to him? What has happened to him? I heard him in his room alone. I knew something had happened to him."

The other could only say: "Go to him, Ima! Go! He must not be alone!"

She was at once obeyed; her voice and face, and nameless dread that had been with Ima since Percival had left the cart and while she heard him in his room, commanded it.

"How will you find him?" Aunt Maggie asked.

Hatless and without covering against the storm, Ima went to the outer door. "He will be on Plowman's Ridge," she said. "I shall find him."

Some instinct took her along the very path that he had followed. Some fear put her to speed. Her heart that he had silenced on Bracken Down and that never again she had permitted him to see, carried her to him. She ran with her skirts taken in her left hand, gipsy again in her free and tireless action, gipsy when at the summit of the Ridge instinct directed her without hesitancy to the right, gipsy when in the blackness she almost ran upon him and a second time revealed him what he was to her.

He cried, "Ima! Why are you here?" but carried his surprise no further.

"Percival, what has come to thee?"

"O Ima, leave me alone! leave me alone!"

"Ah, let me help thee!"

He cried, "None can—none can help me! Leave me! leave me!" Almost he struck her with his frantic arms that pressed her from him. She nothing cared, but caught them:

"Ah, suffer me to help thee. Look how I have come to thee. I healed thee once."

Her voice, and memories of her touch when he had lain sick, acted upon him. "Hold my hands, then. I must hold something. Hold them, hold them! O Ima, I am suffering, suffering!"

"That is why I am come. Your hands burn in mine and tremble."

"Kind Ima!" he said brokenly. "Kind Ima!" and put her hands to his face.

She caught at her breath. There came a sudden lull in the storm as though the wind paused for words she tried to make.

"Some one is running to us," Percival cried, and took his hands from her; stepped where approaching feet sounded and suddenly caught one that ran into his arms.

"Who are you?" Then peered and then cried, "Hunt!"

The figure that he held panted for breath. "I'm going to him—me lord," Hunt said, and laughed with the words.

Percival went back a step and there came to Ima's ears his breathing, heavy as Hunt's that laboured from his run. "What do you mean?"

Again the laugh. "I heard, me lord. Like as I heard that odd bit in the hall at the Manor years back and never forgot it that day to this."

"How did you hear?"

"I come to you. I come to you hiding, knowing you'd be kind as was the only one ever kind to me. Hid in your bedroom back of the screen, you not being there. Saw you come in and heard—"

His sentence was broken in the savage hands with which Percival caught his collar and shook him. "What did you hear? What? What?"

"Leave off of me! You're choking of me."

"What did you hear?"

"Y're Lord Burdon. Not him—not that—"

He was swung from his feet by Percival's grasp. "What now? What now, Hunt?"

"Leave off of me! Leave off! You're killing me."

The grip relaxed, and Hunt shook himself free, and tossed his arms. "What now?" he echoed, and had hate and dreadful laughter in the scream his words made. "What now! I come out for him! For him and 'er as put me away and as I told her in the dock I'd come. Straight for 'em I come. Straight for 'em with the police after me. Stole this for 'em and come to give it 'em." He drew from his jacket what gleamed in his hand as he shook it aloft. "Come to shoot 'em like dogs as used me like dogs, the bloody tyrangs. I've got better for 'em now. They can go free—free! turned out! turned out! chucked into the street! kicked out! Think of 'em! Think of 'em crying and howling and beggars and laughed at and pointed at! That's what I'm going to give 'em. Into my hand God Almighty what casts down the oppressors and the tyrangs has delivered 'em! That's what—ar-r-r!"

Percival was on him and threw him. His throat was in Percival's clutch and his hands tearing at the hands that throttled him.

"You are not!" Percival cried. "You are not. By God, you shall not!"

In those wild words of Hunt's and what they meant—the world's mockery; in that vile face and what it stood for—the world's cruelty, clearly there came to him the answer that vainly in his torment he had sought. Rollo face this? Rollo to this be subjected? Rollo suffer ejection from home and name? Ah, now he knew which in the big fight had been defeat and which was victory. "Rollo! Rollo! Rollo!" he had cried, and cried it as a curse. "Rollo! Rollo! Rollo!" now beat in his brain and in his grinding fingers and was pulse of the old protection throbbing for his friend that ever had been more than brother to him.

"Percival, you are killing him!"—Ima's fingers were on his, pulling his grip.

"Keep away! keep away!" he cried. "I'll have his life if need be!" and to Hunt, livid and at last gasp: "You damned devil! You damned devil! What are you going to promise me? How am I going to bind you? What am I going to do with you?"

There came gaspingly: "Promise—promise—oath to it."

He relaxed his fingers, and as Hunt drew gasping breaths, "You damned devil!" he cried again. "You damned fool. Did you not hear talk of proofs? Nothing in them! Nothing in them! Can you hear that?"

He was thrown on his side, he was grappled with by one whom fear of death gave strength, his clutch was eluded and Hunt sprang free.

"Nothing in them! What's your murder fingers for, then? Nothing in them—what you say 'Mother' for, then? Nothing in them—what—keep away! Keep off of me!" He whipped from his pocket what had gleamed in his hand. "Keep off of me! I'll fire. By God, I'll let you have it if you come at me!"

An' come at him, an' come at him, an' come at him, as of Percival in the fight the old men say.

Quick and straight as he had leapt at Pinsent, now quick and straight he leapt at Hunt. Quick and straight then to win victory, now quick and straight in victory already gained. Quick and straight he leapt; quicker the pistol spoke; without reel or stumble he pitched to earth.

There came a scream of hideous sound from Hunt, and screaming still he turned and fled, screaming was answered by a shout, and screaming ran to the hold of tall men come out of the night in his pursuit and close, yet very late, before he screamed.

From Ima no cry nor sound. She cast herself beside the figure that lay there, looked in its face and had no need for word or question; pressed her lips to his and then cried only, "Little master! ah, ah, Percival!"

She threw herself full length upon him where full length he lay. With her body she shielded him from the immense rain, with her arms enfolded him, put her mouth to his.

So she lay scarcely breathing; so she held him—hers, her own.

There is a hill that stands in a chain of hills where the west country stands towards the sea. A river streams below in a great mouth that opens to sea and a wide flood that winds along the vale. No more than a wide ribbon it looks from the hill, and the sea no more than the sky's reflection. Here on a day the van stood, the horse tethered, and Japhra with his pipe watching the remote valley. He turned his eyes to Ima, knew the thoughts that had her, and touched her where she sat beside him on the steps. All was known to them in these days and he spoke of it. "My daughter, art thou still questioning it? Why, this was the happy ending such as none could make it. How had he endured to live and overthrow his friend? How live in silence and carry those hot embers in his breast? Nay, nay, the fight came to him—that heart of ours—and he took up the prize. A fighter I marked him when a child he came to us. A fighter I knew him and a winner alway. Mark me what I told thee once when he lay with us: Though it be death, always victory. My daughter, what more happiness is there?"

THE END