IN THE GRIP OF THE HAWK
CHAPTER I
FAMILY JARS
The long-drawn, melancholy wail of the curlew rose and fell thrice in the garden, and Terence Moore went to the window and looked out into the clear moonlight.
'Is that you, George?' he hailed.
'Yes. Come out quietly; I want to talk to you.'
Terence hung by his hands from the sill and dropped to the ground beside his visitor. 'What is the matter, George?' he inquired anxiously. 'Why won't you come in?'
'Because I wish to see you alone, and I don't want any one to know that I am here. You may as well hear it first as last, old fellow—I have left home.'
'I am not surprised. My only wonder is that you have stayed there so long,' Terence commented, lifting his tip-tilted nose still higher.
'Things have come to a head, you see,' explained George Haughton. 'The colonel struck me this evening, and though, of course, I don't mind that, yet I can't stand any longer the sort of life I have been forced to lead for the past year or two.'