n."

Mark looked round and beheld a boy of about his own age and size in a
pair of worn corduroy knickerbockers and a guernsey, who was regarding
him from fierce blue eyes under a shock of curly yellow hair.

"I'm not touching it," Mark explained. Then something warned him that he
must assert himself, if he wished to hold his own with this boy, and he
added:

"But if I want to touch it, I will."

"Will 'ee? I say you won't do no such a thing then."

Mark seized the top of the headstone as firmly as his small hands would
allow him and invited the boy to look what he was doing.

"Lev go," the boy commanded.

"I won't," said Mark.

"I'll make 'ee lev go."

"All right, make me."

The boy punched Mark's shoulder, and Mark punched blindly back, hitting
his antagonist such a little way above the belt as to lay himself under
the imputation of a foul blow. The boy responded by smacking Mark's face
with his open palm; a moment later they were locked in a close struggle,
heaving and panting and pushing until both of them tripped on the low
railing of a grave and rolled over into a carefully tended bed of
primroses, whence they were suddenly jerked to their feet, separated,
and held at arm's length by an old man with a grey beard and a small
round hole in the left temple.

"I'll learn you to scat up my tombs," said the old man shaking them
violently. "'Tisn't the first time I've spoken to you, Cass Dale, and
who's this? Who's this boy?"

"Oh, my gosh, look behind 'ee, Mr. Timbury. The bullocks is coming into
the churchyard."

Mr. Timbury loosed his hold on the two boys as he turned, and Cass Dale
catching hold of Mark's hand shouted:

"Come on, run, or he'll have us again."

They were too quick for the old man's wooden leg, and scrambling over
the wall by the south porch of the church they were soon out of danger
on the beach below.

"My gosh, I never heard him coming. If I hadn't have thought to sing out
about the bullocks coming, he'd have laid that stick round us sure
enough. He don't care where he hits anybody, old man Timbury don't. I
belong to hear him tap-tapping along with his old wooden stump, but darn
'ee I never heard 'un coming this time."

The old man was leaning over the churchyard wall, shaking his stick and
abusing them with violent words.

"That's fine language for a sexton," commented Cass Dale. "I'd be
ashamed to swear like that, I would. You wouldn't hear my father swear
like that. My fa