hildish trebles from the yard beyond the hedge. And after
dinner Caleb was astonished when the boy explained, a little awkwardly,
that he was going over to Allison's grounds for a while. Allison
himself passed Steve in the hedge gap and, with a word of greeting,
stopped to shake hands with him gravely. So it came about that they
were sitting together, Dexter and Caleb, smoking in silence, when
Barbara Allison's first wild scream came shrilling to their ears. They
waited, staring at each other until the riotous clamor which rose set
them to running across the lawn. But the scene which met Caleb's eyes
when he burst through the shrubbery froze him into immobility.

There was a seething pack of children around two writhing figures upon
the ground; they were all shrieking in soprano panic--all save Garry
Devereau. He, standing a little to one side, was smiling his queer,
crooked, handsome smile, while Stephen O'Mara mauled the Honorable
Archibald Wickersham with true riverman thoroughness, which meant the
infliction of the greatest possible damage in the least possible time.
An inscrutable sort of contempt curled his lips when Barbara Allison
frantically begged him to rescue the small Britisher from the storm of
fists--a man's contempt for another man who does not take his
punishment in silence. For the howls of the Honorable Archie were
louder and more piercing than the loudest of the hysterical little
girls who were watching.

Caleb felt as a man feels who tries to run in a nightmare and cannot
make his feet obey the commands of his brain. It was only when Barbara
Allison dropped desperately to her knees beside the huddle of arms and
legs and straining bodies and began to beat with tight-clenched little
hands upon Steve's tousled head, that the power of action returned to
him. He fairly leaped forward then, scattering the circle before his
weighty rush and, leaning over to get a firm grip upon his collar,
jerked Steve upright with one mighty heave. That effort raised the
Honorable Archie to his feet, also, for Steve was clamped to his
antagonist, or victim, with a bulldog grip.

It grew very quiet when Caleb whirled the boy around and stood peering
sternly down into his battle-streaked features. Allison strode quietly
up in that moment.

"Well?" Caleb didn't know just how to begin, but his voice was cold.
"Well, young man, can you explain just what this means?"

The Honorable Archie limped away a pace or t