, Tryst!' I said, 'it's not my doing, you know!' 'Ah!' he
said, 'I know that; and it'll be blanky well the worse for THEM!' Rough
tongue; no class of man at all, he is! 'Yes,' he said, 'let 'em look
out; I'll be even with 'em yet!' 'None o' that!' I told him; 'you know
which side the law's buttered. I'm making it easy for you, too, keeping
your things in the wagon, ready to shift any time!' He gave me a
look--he's got very queer eyes, swimmin', sad sort of eyes, like a man
in liquor--and he said: 'I've been here twenty years,' he said. 'My wife
died here.' And all of a sudden he went as dumb as a fish. Never let his
eyes off us, though, while we finished up the last of it; made me
feel funny, seein' him glowering like that all the time. He'll savage
something over this, you mark my words!" Again the agent paused, and
remained as though transfixed, holding that face of his, whose yellow
had run into the whites of the eyes, as still as wood. "He's got some
feeling for the place, I suppose," he said suddenly; "or maybe they've
put it into him about his rights; there's plenty of 'em like that. Well,
anyhow, nobody likes his private affairs turned inside out for every
one to gape at. I wouldn't myself." And with that deeply felt remark the
agent put out his leathery-yellow thumb and finger and nipped a second
bluebottle....

While the agent was thus recounting to his wife the day's doings, the
evicted Tryst sat on the end of his bed in a ground-floor room of Tod's
cottage. He had taken off his heavy boots, and his feet, in their thick,
soiled socks, were thrust into a pair of Tod's carpet slippers. He sat
without moving, precisely as if some one had struck him a blow in the
centre of the forehead, and over and over again he turned the heavy
thought: 'They've turned me out o' there--I done nothing, and they
turned me out o' there! Blast them--they turned me out o' there!'...

In the orchard Tod sat with a grave and puzzled face, surrounded by
the three little Trysts. And at the wicket gate Kirsteen, awaiting the
arrival of Derek and Sheila--summoned home by telegram--stood in the
evening glow, her blue-clad figure still as that of any worshipper at
the muezzin-call.

CHAPTER XIX

"A fire, causing the destruction of several ricks and an empty cowshed,
occurred in the early morning of Thursday on the home farm of Sir Gerald
Malloring's estate in Worcestershire. Grave suspicions of arson
are entertained, but up to the pr