hen what?" I asked, with my heart up in my throat.

Hilton waited until he had taken a crowded corner before answering.

"Then he found the dead dog, ma'am, and bathed it, and borrowed the
garden spade from me. Then he took it somewheres back in the ravine
and buried it. I gave him the tool-box off the old roadster, to put
what was left of the pup in."

"And then?" I prompted, with a quaver in my voice I couldn't control.

"He met Mr. Murchison coming out and he called him w'at I'd not like
to repeat, ma'am, until Mr. McKail stepped out to see what was wrong,
and interfered."

"_How_ did he interfere?" was my next question.

"By taking the lad into the house, ma'am," was my witness's retarded
reply.

"Then what happened?" I exacted.

I waited, knowing what was coming, but I dreaded to hear it.

"He gave him a threshing, ma'am," I heard Hilton's voice saying, far
away, as though it came to me over a long-distance telephone on a wet
night.

I sat rigid as we mounted American Hill. I sat rigid as we swerved in
through the ridiculous manor-like gate and up the winding drive and in
under the ugly new porte-cochere. I didn't even wait for Poppsy as I
got out of the car. I didn't even speak to Tokudo as he ran mincingly
to take my things. I walked straight to the breakfast-room where I saw
my husband sitting at the end of the oblong white table, stirring a
cup of coffee with a spoon.

"Where's Dinkie?" I asked, trying to keep my voice low but not quite
succeeding.

Duncan looked up at me with a coldly meditative eye.

"Where he usually is at this time of day," he finally answered.

"Where?" I repeated.

"At school, of course," admitted my husband as he reached out for a
piece of buttered toast. He was making a pretense at being very
tranquil-minded. But his hand, I noticed, wasn't so steady as it might
have been.

"Is he all right?" I demanded, with my voice rising in spite of
myself.

"Considerably better, I imagine, than he has been for some time," was
the deliberate answer from the man with the bloodshot eyes at the end
of the table.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked. And any one of intelligence, I
suppose, could see I was making that question a challenge.

"I mean that since you saw him last he's had a damned good whaling,"
said Duncan, with his jaw squared, so that he reminded me of a
King-Lud bulldog.

I paid no attention to Tokudo, who came into the room to repeat that
his master was wante