Twins crawled through the bracken to a narrow path, went swiftly
and noiselessly down it, and through a little gate on to the high road.

As he set foot on it the Terror said with cold vindictiveness: "We'll
teach him not to answer our letters."

He climbed over a gate into a meadow on the other side of the road,
took their bicycles one after the other from behind the hedge, and
lifted them over the gate. They reached home in time for dinner.

During the meal Mrs. Dangerfield asked how they had been spending the
time since tea; and the Terror said, quite truthfully, that they had
been for a bicycle ride. She did not press him to be more particular
in his account of their doings, though from Erebus' air of subdued
excitement and expectancy she was aware that some important enterprise
was in hand; she had no desire to put any strain on the Terror's
uncommon power of polite evasion.

She was not at all surprised when, at nine o'clock, she went out into
the garden and called to them that it was bedtime, to find that they
were not within hearing. She told herself that she would be lucky if
she got them to bed by ten. But she would have been surprised, indeed,
had she seen them, half an hour earlier, slip out of the back door, in
a condition of exemplary tidiness, dressed in their Sunday best.

They wheeled their bicycles out of the cats' home quietly, mounted,
rode quickly down the road till they were out of hearing of the house,
and then slackened their pace in order to reach their destination cool
and tidy. They timed their arrival with such nicety that as they
dismounted before the door of Deeping Hall, Sir James Morgan, in the
content inspired by an excellent dinner, was settling himself
comfortably in an easy chair in his smoking-room.

They mounted the steps of the Court without a tremor: they were not
only assured of the justice of their cause, they were assured that it
would prevail. A landed proprietor who preserves his pheasants and his
fish with the usual strictness, _can not_ allow himself to be
prosecuted for poaching.

The Terror rang the bell firmly; and Mawley, the butler, surprised at
the coming of visitors at so late an hour, opened the door himself.

"Good evening, Mr. Mawley, we want to see Sir James on important
business," said the Terror with a truly businesslike air.

Mawley had come to the Grange in the train of the Princess Elizabeth;
and since he found the Deeping air uncommonly brac