Here a horrible surprise awaited them. Their beautiful bower, put up with so much skill and trouble, had been completely pulled to pieces. The staves of its roof were stacked in a pile, and the sods had been thrown down the cliff. For a ghastly moment they stared as if hardly able to believe the evidence of their own eyes. Then their indignation found vent.
"What an abominable shame!" exploded Merle.
"Oh, it's too bad! Our lovely hut!" quavered Mavis, practically in tears.
Bevis said nothing. He gazed round the ruin, then stooped and picked something up from the ground. It was a fragment of the blue pottery cup smashed to atoms. He looked at it with somewhat the same consternation with which a hedge-sparrow might regard her torn and robbed nest and broken eggs.
"I'll make somebody pay for this!" he muttered.
The girls were still exclaiming in much wrath and annoyance. At first they were so busy bemoaning the hut that they never heard sounds on the bank behind, then becoming aware of voices they walked out from the quarry to find Tudor, and two of the keepers standing by the fence.
"Hello!" cried Tudor, springing down and greeting them joyously.
But at that moment Bevis stepped from the ruins of Blackthorn Bower and faced him.
"Is this your doing?" he asked abruptly.
The two boys glared at one another with looks that suggested clashing of steel.