"What does that matter? He _will_ be frightened out of his life; he's so young," cried Erebus in a tone of acute distress, gazing after their receding friend with very anxious eyes. "He's not like us; he won't cheek the keeper all the way like we should."

"Oh, Wiggins has plenty of pluck," said the Terror in a rea.s.suring tone.

"But he won't understand he's all right. He's only ten. And there's no saying how that beastly foreigner who shoots nightingales will bully him," cried Erebus with unabated anxiety.

This was her womanly irrational conception of a Pomeranian Briton.

"Well, the sooner we go and fetch his father the sooner he'll be out of it," said the Terror, making as if to mount his bicycle.

"No, no! That won't do at all!" cried Erebus fiercely. "We've got to rescue him now--at once. We got him into the mess; and we've got to get him out of it. You've got to find a way."

"It's all very well," said the Terror, frowning deeply; and he took off his cap to wrestle more manfully with the problem.

Erebus faced him, frowning even more deeply.

Never had the Twins been so hopelessly at a loss.

Then the Terror said in his gloomiest tone: "I can't see what we can do."

"Oh, I'm going to get him out of it somehow!" cried Erebus in a furious desperation.

With that she mounted her bicycle and rode swiftly up the drive.

The Terror mounted, started after her, and stopped at the end of fifty yards. It had occurred to him that, after all, he was the only poacher of the three, the only one in real danger. As he leaned on his machine, watching his vanishing sister, he ground his teeth. For all his natural serenity, inaction was in the highest degree repugnant to him.

Erebus reached Great Deeping Court but a few minutes after Wiggins and the keeper. She was about to ride on round the house, thinking that the keeper would, as befitted his station, enter it by the back door, when she saw Wiggins' bicycle standing against one of the pillars of the great porch. In a natural elation at having captured a poacher, and eager to display his prize without delay, the keeper had gone straight into the great hall.

Erebus dismounted and stood considering for perhaps half a minute; then she moved Wiggins' bicycle so that it was right to his hand if he came out, set her own bicycle against another of the pillars, but out of sight lest he should take it by mistake, walked up the steps, hammered the knocker firmly, and rang the bell. The moment the door opened she stepped quickly past the footman into the hall. The keeper sat on a chair facing her, and on a chair beside him sat Wiggins looking white and woebegone.

Erebus gazed at them with angry sparkling eyes, then she said sharply: "What are you doing with my little brother?"

She adopted Wiggins with this suddenness in order to strengthen her position.

The keeper opened his eyes in some surprise at her uncompromising tone, but he said triumphantly:

"I caught 'im poachin'--"

"Stand up! What do you mean by speaking to me sitting down?" cried Erebus in her most imperative tone.

The keeper stood up with uncommon quickness and a sudden sheepish air: "'E was poachin'," he said sulkily.

"He was not! A little boy like that!" cried Erebus scornfully.

"Anyways, 'e was aidin' an' abettin', an' I've brought 'im to Mr.

D'Arcy Rosynimer an' it's for 'im to say," said the keeper stubbornly.

There came a faint click from the beautiful lips of Erebus, the gentle click by which the Twins called each other to attention. At the sound Wiggins, his face faintly flushed with hope, braced himself. Erebus measured the distance with the eye of an expert, just as there came into the farther end of the hall that large, flabby, pudding-faced young Pomeranian Briton, Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer.

"Where's the boacher?" he roared in an eager, angry voice, reverting in his emotion to the ancestral "b."

As the keeper turned to him Erebus sprang to the door and threw it wide.

"Bolt, Wiggins!" she cried.

Wiggins bolted for the door; the keeper grabbed at him and missed; the footman grabbed, and grabbed the interposing Erebus. She slammed the door behind the vanished Wiggins.

Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer dashed heavily down the hall with a thick howl.

Erebus set her back against the door. He caught her by the left arm to sling her out of the way. It was a silly arm to choose, for she caught him a slap on his truly Pomeranian expanse of cheek with the full swing of her right, a slap that rang through the great hall like the crack of a whip-lash. Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer was large but tender. He howled again, and thumped at Erebus with big flabby fists. She caught the first blow on an uncommonly acute elbow. The second never fell, for the footman caught him by the collar and swung him round.

"It's not for the likes of you to 'it Henglish young ladies!" he cried with patriotic indignation.

Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer gasped and gurgled; then he howled furiously, "Ged out of my house! Now--at once--ged out!"

"And pleased I shall be to go--when I've bin paid my wages. It's a month to-morrow since I gave notice, anyhow. I've had enough of furriners," said the footman with cold exultation.

"Go--go--ged oud!" roared Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer.

"When I've bin paid my wages," said the footman coldly.

Erebus waited to hear no more. She turned the latch, slipped through the door, and slammed it behind her. To her dismay she saw a big motorcar coming round the corner of the house. She mounted quickly and raced down the drive. Wiggins was already out of sight.

Just outside the lodge gates she found the Terror waiting for her.

"I've sent Wiggins on!" he shouted as she pa.s.sed.

"Come on! Come on!" she shrieked back. "The beastly foreigner's got a motor-car!"

He caught her up in a quarter of a mile; and she told him that the car had been ready to start. They caught up Wiggins a mile and a half down the road; and all three of them sat down to ride all they knew. They were fully eight miles from home, and the car could go three miles to their one on that good road. The Twins alone would have made a longer race of it; but the pace was set by the weaker Wiggins. They had gone little more than three miles when they heard the honk of the car as it came rapidly round a corner perhaps half a mile behind them.

"Go on, Terror!" cried Erebus. "You're the one that matters! You did the poaching! I'll look after Wiggins! He'll be all right with me."

For perhaps fifty yards the Terror hesitated; then the wisdom of the advice sank in, and he shot ahead. Erebus kept behind Wiggins; and they rode on. The car was overhauling them rapidly, but not so rapidly as it would have done had not Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer, who lacked the courage of his famous grenadier ancestors, been in it. He was howling at his straining chauffeur to go slower.

Nevertheless at the end of a mile and a half the car was less than fifty yards behind them; and then a figure came into sight swinging briskly along.

"It's your father!" gasped Erebus.

It was, indeed, the higher mathematician.

As they reached him, they flung themselves off their bicycles; and Erebus cried: "Wiggins hasn't been poaching at all! It was the Terror!"

"Was it, indeed?" said Mr. Carrington calmly.

On his words the car was on them; and as it came to a dead stop Mr.

D'Arcy Rosenheimer tumbled clumsily out of it.

"I've got you, you liddle devil!" he bellowed triumphantly, but quite incorrectly; and he rushed at Wiggins who stepped discreetly behind his father.