et it! It was very kind of you to take my part a little while
ago--especially as you couldn't have been really in sympathy with me.
Thank you very much!"

Again he made that gesture of imperious impatience. "Oh, don't be so
beastly formal! I can't stand it. If it had been any other man
threatening you, I believe I should have killed him!"

He spoke with concentrated passion, but Avery was resolved not to be
tragic. She was striving to get back to wholesome commonplace.

"What a good thing it wasn't!" she said. "I shouldn't have cared to have
been responsible for that. I had quite enough to answer for as it was. I
hope you will make peace with your grandfather as soon as possible."

Piers laughed a savage laugh. "He broke his whip over me. Do you think
I'm going to make peace with him for that?"

"Oh, Piers!" she exclaimed in distress.

It was out before she could check it--that involuntary use of his
Christian name for which it seemed to her afterwards he had been
deliberately lying in wait.

He did not take immediate advantage of her slip, but she knew that he
noticed it, registered it as it were for future reference.

"No," he said moodily, after a pause. "I don't think the debt is on my
side this time. He had the satisfaction of flogging me with the whole
Hunt looking on." There was sullen resentment in his tone, and then very
suddenly to Avery's amazement he began to laugh. "It was worth it anyway,
so we won't cavil about the price. How much longer are you going to
bottle up that unfortunate brute? Don't you think it's time he went home
to his wife?"

Avery moved away from the shutter against which she had stood so long. "I
couldn't let him be killed," she said. "You won't understand, of course.
But I simply couldn't."

"Why shouldn't I understand?" said Piers. "You threw that in my teeth
before. I don't know why."

His tone baffled her. She could not tell whether he spoke in jest or
earnest. She refrained from answering him, and in the silence that
followed he lifted the shutter away from the hut entrance and looked
inside. Avery's basket of purchases lay at his feet. He picked it up.
"Come along! He's crouched up in the corner, and his eyes look as if he
thought all the devils in hell were after him. Odd as it may seem to you,
I can understand his feelings--and yours. Let's go, and leave him to
escape in peace!"

He took her arm as naturally as though he had a right, and led her
away. Her basket was