e sounds--horrible
shuffling sounds--and in the dusk they saw the head of one of the
hounds above the coping and his forepaws clinging as he strained to
heave himself over.

"Off! Keep 'en off!"

They caught him by both hands, dragged him within, and slammed the
door.

"Hide me! Hi--!"

The word ended with a thud as he pitched headlong on the slate
pavement. Through the barred door the scream of the mare Nonesuch
answered it.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BARRIERS FALL.

There were marks of teeth on his right boot, but no marks at all on
his body. Fright--or fright following on that evening's frenzy--had
killed him.

He was buried three days later, and Mr. Raymond read the service.
No rain had fallen, and the blood of the three hounds still stained
the gravel dividing the grave from the porch, where the crowd had
shot them down.

For a while his death made small difference to the family at the
Parsonage. They had fought his enmity and proved it not formidable
for brave hearts. But they had scarcely realised their success, and
wondered why his death did not affect them more.

About this time Taffy began to carry out a scheme which he and his
father had often discussed, but hitherto had found no leisure for--
the setting up of wooden crosses on the graves of the drowned
sailormen. They had wished for slate, but good slate was expensive
and hard to come by, and Taffy had no skill in stone-cutting.
Since wood it must be, he resolved to put his best work into it.
The names, etc., should be engraved, not painted merely. Some of the
pew-fronts in the church had panels elaborately carved in flat and
shallow relief--fine Jacobean designs, all of them. He took careful
rubbings of their traceries, and set to work to copy them on the face
of his crosses.

One afternoon, some three weeks after the Squire's funeral, he
happened to return to the house for a tracing which he had forgotten,
and found Honoria seated in the kitchen and talking with his father
and mother. She was dressed in black, of course, and either this or
the solemnity of her visit gave her quite a grown-up look. But, to
be sure, she was mistress of Tredinnis now, and a child no longer.

Taffy guessed the meaning of her visit at once. And no doubt this
act of formal reconciliation between Tredinnis House and the
Parsonage had cost her some nervousness. As Taffy entered his
parents stood up and seemed just as awkward as their visitor.
"Ano