"Certainly it's by my orders," returned Tudor in his most lofty and insolent tone. "What business had you building a hut on my property? A regular squatter! I won't have you fellows from the village coming poaching up here. I'll throw every rabbit trap I find down the cliffs, so I give you warning. I could prosecute you for breaking down that fence."
"Oh, Tudor! Bevis doesn't poach," interposed Merle.
"He built the hut for us," put in Mavis.
Unfortunately the girls' remarks only made matters worse.
"A nice fellow you are to take young ladies about!" continued Tudor tauntingly. "I wonder they'll condescend to walk with you. A nobody like you, who doesn't know where he comes from! You may fancy yourself no end——"
But here Bevis, whose dark face held a "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy" expression, sprang at him in an anger too deep and furious for words.
Both the boys were wrestlers. For one wild minute they held each other, and swayed to and fro as they struggled, while the girls shrieked in alarm, and the keepers, standing by the fence, gaped too utterly amazed to interfere. Then Bevis, by far the fitter and stronger of the two, gained the mastery, and seizing Tudor, flung him violently away. He fell, and rolled over and over nearly twenty feet down the side of the cliff. Then the keepers recovered from their frozen paralysis, and rushed to the rescue of their young employer.
Fortunately Tudor had landed upon a platform of rock, but he lay there quite quiet and still, and did not stir when the men carried him up. His eyes were closed, and his head hung loosely as they laid him down beside the ruined bower. One of them fetched water in a hat and bathed his temples, and the other rubbed his hands. The girls looked on in pitiful distress. Bevis was still standing on the patch of grass that was the scene of their combat. He stared at Tudor's prostrate form with wild, horror-stricken eyes.
"I've murdered him," he gasped to Mavis and Merle. "It's murder! Yes, that's what it is! I'm going away, and you'll never see me any more! I'm not fit to say good-bye to you!"
And without another look he turned and began scrambling recklessly down the cliff, not following a path, but dropping anyhow over the rocks as if he did not care what happened to him. For a moment or two he was visible, and then he vanished.