d me to go into the back kitchen and wash my
face--and ears.

I could have forgiven him all but that word.

Then Harriet Caw giggled, and said she would come and see that I did
it. But just then the tide turned. For, hearing Harriet say this,
Elsie came along, too, and though I was, indeed, pretty grimy with
racing and scratching along after these Bewick pit fellows, she took my
hands, right under the nose of Harriet Caw, and said, "Joe, I thank you
for saving my life!"

Then, loosing one of my hands, she put her palm on my shoulder, and
stooped and kissed me on the forehead, ever so stately and noble, like
another of those _Graphic_ pictures.

But evidently Harriet Caw did not think so, for she only sniffed and,
turning on her patent india-rubber heels (which she had bought to
imitate Elsie), she went right upstairs.

So it was Elsie who helped me to wash away the smoke of battle. That
wasn't so altogether bad. You should have seen her eyes, all you other
fellows, when I undid the yellow leather belt from about my war-worn
waist, and gave her the pouch of cartridges to put away.

"Are they Dum-Dum?" she said reverently.

And I said they were.

I didn't really know about the cartridges, but at least _I_ was--and
Elsie liked it very well. The fellows who talk a lot at such times
never get on with girls.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A FIT OF THE SULKS

Jove, wasn't it just ripping to think that at last a chap could go
where he liked, and do what he liked--all that horrid lot at the Grange
being either dead or with the locksmith's fingers between them and the
outside world! Ripping? Rather! It was like a new earth.

All the same, you have no idea what a show place the ruined Grange
became. Old Bailiff Ball stayed on and made a pretty penny by showing
the people over. Especially the weaving-room, and where old Hobby sat,
and the keyhole through which Elsie peeped to see her grandfather as if
praying over the loom, with Jeremy's knife hafted between his shoulder
blades! I think they would have had a magic lantern next! But finally
this was stopped by the police people. For Miss Orrin was still to be
tried, and all the money that could be got out of the grounds of Deep
Moat Grange was to be given back to the friends and relatives of the
people who had been "arranged for." But the mischief was, nobody
wanted to buy, and the whole place was in danger of going to rack and
ruin.

As for me, I took to wa