get the word--something you are
when you go on a platform and do silly things the man tells you.

So, hoping she would stop, I said at last, "Well, perhaps they are more
shiny, like brown paint--varnished."

But this didn't please her either. Indeed, it was difficult to please
Harriet Caw at all. She said that I was twice as stupid as a cow, and
asked where I had lived all my life.

"In Breckonside," I said, but I added that I had often been with my
father at East Dene. And once I had crossed the ferry all by myself
and spent Easter Monday at Thoisby itself.

"Humph," she said, wrinkling up her nose with great contempt. "I
suppose that you have never even heard of London."

I told her "Yes, of course." And that I could tell her the number of
its inhabitants.

But this she didn't seem to think clever, or, indeed, to care about at
all.

She only said, "Are all country boys as stupid as you are?"

To be called a boy like that made me angry, and I ran after her,
determined to pay her out. I was going to show her that country boys
could just be as sharp as there was any need for.

But quick as I was, this city girl was quicker, and she slipped across
the road almost at the very place where we had found the last traces of
poor Harry Foster. She dived among the underbrush by the stile, and I
lost sight of her altogether.

But the next moment I heard a cry. You had better believe I wasted no
time till I got there. I ran, opening a good, stout clasp knife that
father had given me--or, if not "given" exactly, had seen me with, and
not taken away from me. It comes to the same thing.

Well, just a little away across a green glade, all pine needles and sun
dapplings, stood Mad Jeremy, and he had Harriet Caw by the arm. I went
at him as fast as I could--which was a silly thing to do, for, of
course, with his strength he could have done me up in two ticks of a
clock. Only, as mostly happens when one does fine things, it was all
over before I thought.

[Illustration: "Just a little way across a green glade--stood Mad
Jeremy--he had Harriett Caw by the hand."]

But when Mad Jeremy saw me, or, perhaps, before (I do not want to take
credit for anything that isn't my due), he let go of Harriet Caw,
saying just "She isn't the pretty one! What is she doing here?" And
with a skip and a jump he was gone. That is, so far as I could see.

Then Harriet swooned away in my arms, toppling over like a ladder
slipping