"All right. We'll see about that," replied Mr. Doutfire in the tone he might use to a naughty child. "I understand the prisoner threatened and assaulted you, Mr.----?" he added to Carnaby, producing his note book. "Yes," affirmed that valiant gentleman. "I'm cut and stabbed all over." "Tut!" cried the prisoner explosively. "The fellow is a great coward. He cries if you prick him." "You will," continued Mr. Doutfire, unheeding the interruption, "charge the prisoner, I presume, with feloniously cutting and wounding?" "That's it," replied Mr. Leo, regaining confidence. "Carnaby, you great fool, why didn't you wring his neck and fling the little brute into the dust-hole?" Carnaby failed to impart into his expression any regret that he had not endeavoured to forestall the suggestion. "Good job he didn't try it on, ma'am," observed Mr. Doutfire dryly. "Whether he succeeded or not, in either case it might have been awkward for him. You'll attend at 10.30 a.m. to-morrow at the Court House, Great Bunbury," he added. "And some of you gentlemen had better be on hand to give evidence if required." He nodded to Tugby, and each taking an arm of the speechless duke they conducted him, with certain indications of unwillingness on his part, to the door. This the representative of the Saloljas favoured with a mighty kick, by way of protest and also doubtless of letting off some of his compressed rage. Mr. Doutfire pulled him unceremoniously back, then, as Tugby opened the door, shot him forwards, and in such humiliating fashion did the manacled Grandee disappear from the scene of his brief triumph. Those who remained were now at liberty to take more precise and less preoccupied notice of one another. "So I've got you at last, Lord Quorn," observed Miss Leo with somewhat menacing satisfaction. "No, you haven't," objected that person, coolly lighting a fresh cigar." "Oh, haven't I?" the lady rejoined. "You hear that, Carnaby dear?" "Don't worry dear Carnaby," put in Peckover. "He has got a headache." Mr. Leo's stony stare of discomfiture did not relax to traverse the statement. Mechanically he put forth a great hand and poured himself out, as in a dream, an overflowing glass of port wine. He then, still in a state of mental apathy, sought, with cowed and lacklustre eye, the cigar-box and absently helped himself--to more of the contents than he could smoke at once. But he made no other and more relevant answer to the bugle-call of his sister's question. It was felt by the three men that the legend of his doughty deeds was a myth; as a terrorist he belonged to ancient history. CHAPTER XLI