"What's the matter?" said Mr. Carrington.

The excited young Pomeranian Briton, taking in his age and size at a single glance, shoved him aside with splendid violence. Mr. Carrington seemed to step lightly backward and forward in one movement; his left arm shot out; and there befell Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer what, in the technical terms affected by the fancy, is described as "an uppercut on the point which put him to sleep." He fell as falls a sack of potatoes, and lay like a log.

The keeper had just disengaged himself from the car and hurried forward.

"Do you want some too, my good man?" said Mr. Carrington in his most agreeable tone, keeping his guard rather low.

The keeper stopped short and looked down, with a satisfaction he made no effort to hide, at the body of his stricken employer which lay between them.

"I can't say as I do, sir," he said civilly; and he backed away.

"Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me the name of this hulking young blackguard who a.s.saults quiet elderly gentlemen, taking const.i.tutionals, in this most unprovoked and wanton fashion," said the higher mathematician in the same agreeable tone.

"a.s.saults?--'Im a.s.sault?--Yes, sir; it's Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer, of Great Deeping Court, sir," said the keeper respectfully.

"Then tell Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer, when he recovers the few wits he looks to have, with my compliments, that he will some time this evening be summoned for a.s.sault. Good afternoon," said Mr. Carrington, and he turned on his heel.

The keeper and the chauffeur stooped over the body of their young employer. Mr. Carrington did not so much as turn his head. He put his walking-stick under his arm, and rubbed the knuckles of his left hand with rueful tenderness. None the less he looked pleased; it was gratifying to a slight man of his sedentary habit to have knocked down such a large, round Pomeranian Briton with such exquisite neatness.

Wheeling their bicycles, Erebus and Wiggins walked beside him with a proud air. They felt that they shone with his reflected glory. It was a delightful sensation.

They had gone some forty yards, when Erebus said in a hushed, awed, yet gratified tone: "Have you killed him, Mr. Carrington?"

"No, my child. I am not a pork-butcher," said Mr. Carrington amiably.

"He _looked_ as if he was dead," said Erebus; and there was a faint ring of disappointment in her tone.

"In a short time the young man will come to himself; and let us hope that it will be a better and wiser self," said Mr. Carrington. "But what was it all about? What did that truculent young ruffian want with Rupert?"

Erebus paused, looking earnestly round to the horizon for inspiration; then she dashed at the awkward subject with commendable glibness: "It was a pheasant in Great Deeping wood," she said. "The Terror found it, I suppose. I had gone on, and I didn't see that part. But it was Wiggins the keeper caught. Of course--"

"I beg your pardon; but I should like that point a little clearer,"

broke in Mr. Carrington. "Had you ridden on too, Rupert? Or did you see what happened?"

"Oh, yes; I was there," said Wiggins readily. "And the Terror found the pheasant in the wood and put it in his bicycle basket. And we had just got on our bicycles when the keeper came out of the wood, and I ran into him; and he collared me and took me up to the Court. I wasn't really frightened--at least, not much."

"The keeper had no right to touch him," Erebus broke in glibly.

"Wiggins never touched the pheasant; he didn't even go into the wood; and when I went into the hall, the hall of the Court, I found him and the keeper sitting there, and I let Wiggins out, of course, and then that horrid Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer who shoots nightingales, caught hold of me by the arm ever so roughly, and I slapped him just once. I should think that the mark is still there "--her speed of speech slackened to a slower vengeful gratification and then quickened again--"and he began to thump me and the footman interfered, and I came away, and they came after us in the car, and you saw what happened--at least you did it."

She stopped somewhat breathless.

"Lucidity itself," said Mr. Carrington. "But let us have the matter of the pheasant clear. Was the Terror exploring the wood on the chance of finding a pheasant, or had he reason to expect that a pheasant would be there ready to be brought home?"

Erebus blushed faintly, looked round the horizon somewhat aimlessly, and said, "Well, there was a snare, you know."

Mr. Carrington chuckled and said: "I thought so. I thought we should come to that snare in time. Did you know there was a snare, Rupert?"

"Oh, no, he didn't know anything about it!" Erebus broke in quickly.

"We should never have thought of letting him into anything so dangerous! He's so young!"

"I shall be eleven in a fortnight!" said Wiggins with some heat.

"You see, we wanted a fur stole at Barker's in Rowington for a Christmas present for mother; and pheasants were the only way we could think of getting it," said Erebus in a confidential tone.

"Light! Light at last!" cried Mr. Carrington; and he laughed gently.

"Well, every one has been a.s.saulted except the poacher; exquisitely Pomeranian! But it's just as well that they have, or that ingenious brother of yours would be in a fine mess. As it is, I think we can go on teaching our young Pomeranian not to be so high-spirited." He chuckled again.

He walked on briskly; and on the way to Little Deeping, he drew from Erebus the full story of their poaching. When they reached the village he did not go to his own house, but stopped at the garden gate of Mr.

Tupping, the lawyer who had sold his practise at Rowington and had retired to Little Deeping. At his gate Mr. Carrington bade Erebus good afternoon and told her to tell the Terror not to thrust himself on the notice of any of Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer's keepers who might be sent out to hunt for the real culprit. He would better keep quiet.

Erebus mounted her bicycle and rode quickly home. She found the Terror in the cats' home, awaiting her impatiently.

"Well, did Wiggins get away all right?" he cried. "I pa.s.sed Mr.

Carrington; and I thought he'd see that they didn't carry him off again."

Erebus told him in terms of the warmest admiration how firmly Mr.

Carrington had dealt with the Pomeranian foe.

"By Jove! That was ripping! I do wish I'd been there!" said the Terror. "He only hit him once, you say?"

"Only once. And he told me to tell you to lie low in case Mr.

Rosenheimer's keepers are out hunting for you," said Erebus.

"I am lying low," said the Terror. "And I've got rid of that pheasant.

I sold it to Mr. Carrington's cook as I came through the village. I thought it was better out of the way."

"Then that's all right. We only want about another half-crown," said Erebus.

Mr. Carrington found Mr. Tupping at home; and he could not have gone to a better man, for though the lawyer had given up active practise, he still retained the work of a few old clients in whom he took a friendly interest; and among them was Mrs. Dangerfield.

He was eager to prevent the Terror from being prosecuted for poaching not only because the scandal would annoy her deeply but also because she could so ill afford the expense of the case. He readily fell in with the view of Mr. Carrington that they had better take the offensive, and that the violent behavior of Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer had given them the weapons.

The result of their council was that not later than seven o'clock that evening Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer was served by the constable of Little Deeping with a summons for an a.s.sault on Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, and with another summons for an a.s.sault on Bertram Carrington, F. R.

S.; and in the course of the next twenty minutes his keeper was served with a summons for an a.s.sault on Rupert Carrington.

Though on recovering consciousness he had sent the keeper to scour the neighborhood for Wiggins and the Terror, Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer was in a chastened shaken mood, owing to the fact that he had been "put to sleep by an uppercut on the point." He made haste to despatch a car into Rowington to bring the lawyer who managed his local business.

The lawyer knew his client's unpopularity in the county, and advised him earnestly to try to hush these matters up. He declared that however Pomeranian one might be by extraction and in spirit, no bench of English magistrates would take a favorable view of an a.s.sault by a big young man on a middle-aged higher mathematician of European reputation, or on Miss Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, aged thirteen, gallantly rescuing that higher mathematician's little boy from wrongful arrest and detention.

Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer held his aching head with both hands, protested that they had done all the effective a.s.saulting, and protested his devotion to the sacred bird beloved of the English magistracy. But he perceived clearly enough that he had let that devotion carry him too far, and that a Bench which never profited by it, so far as to shoot the particular sacred birds on which it was lavished, would not be deeply touched by it. Therefore he instructed the lawyer to use every effort to settle the matter out of court.

The lawyer dined with him lavishly, and then had, himself driven over to Little Deeping in the car, to Mr. Carrington's house. He found Mr.

Carrington uncommonly bitter against his client; and he did his best to placate him by urging that the a.s.sault had been met with a prompt.i.tude which had robbed it of its violence, and that he could well afford to be generous to a man whom he had so neatly put to sleep with an uppercut on the point.

Mr. Carrington held out for a while; but in the background, behind the more prominent figures in the affair, lurked the Terror with a veritable poached pheasant; and at last he made terms. The summonses should be withdrawn on condition that nothing more was heard about that poached pheasant and that Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer contributed fifty guineas to the funds of the Deeping Cottage Hospital. The lawyer accepted the terms readily; and his client made no objection to complying with them.

The matter was at an end by noon of the next day; and Mr. Carrington sent for the Terror and talked to him very seriously about this poaching. He did not profess to consider it an enormity; he dwelt at length on the extreme annoyance his mother would feel if he were caught and prosecuted. In the end he gave him the choice of giving his word to snare no more pheasants, or of having his mother informed that he was poaching. The Terror gave his word to snare no more pheasants the more readily since if Mrs. Dangerfield were informed of his poaching, she would forbid him to set another snare for anything. Besides, he had been somewhat shaken by his narrow escape the day before. Only he pointed out that he could not be quite sure of never snaring a pheasant, for pheasants went everywhere. Mr. Carrington admitted this fact and said that it would be enough if he refrained from setting his snares on ground sacred to the sacred bird. If pheasants wandered into them on unpreserved ground, it was their own fault. Thanks therefore to the firmness of her friends Mrs. Dangerfield never learned of the Terror's narrow escape.

The Twins bore the loss of income from the sacred bird with even minds, since the sum needed for the fur stole was so nearly complete. They turned their attention to the habits of the hare, and snared one in the hedge of the farthest meadow of farmer Stubbs. Mrs. Blenkinsop's cook paid them half-a-crown for it; and the three guineas were complete.