“I’m not going to listen to him,” remarked Haigh, unexpectedly. “Or to you either!” he snapped at Jan. “Oh, ain’t you?” crowed Mulberry. “Well, you can shut your ears, and you needn’t believe anything but your own eyes. I’ll show you! I’ll show you!” He dived into a bramble bush alongside the old forked tree. It was a literal dive. His head disappeared in the dense green tangle. He almost lost his legs. Then a hand came out behind him, and flung something at their feet. It was an empty champagne bottle. Another followed, then another and another till the open space was strewn with them. Neither Haigh nor Jan said a word; but from the bush there came a gust of ribaldry or rancour with every bottle, and last of all the man himself, waving one about him like an Indian club. “A live 'un among the deaders!” he roared deliriously. “Now I can drink your blessed healths before I go!” Master and boy looked on like waxworks, without raising a hand to stop him, or a finger between them to brush away a fly. Jan for his part neither realised nor cared what was happening; it was the end of all things, for him or Evan, if not for them both. Evan would hear of it—and then—and then! But _would_ he hear? Would he, necessarily? Jan glanced at Haigh, and saw something that he almost liked in him at last; something human, after all these years; but only until Haigh saw him, and promptly fell upon the flies. Mulberry meanwhile had knocked the neck off the unopened bottle with a dexterous blow from one of the empties. A fountain of foam leapt up like a plume of smoke; the pothouse expert blew it to the winds, and drank till the jagged bottle stood on end upon his upturned visage. His blood ran with the overflowing wine—scarlet on purple—and for a space the draught had the curiously clarifying effect of liquor on the chronic inebriate. It made him sublimely sober for about a minute. The sparkle passed from the wine into those dim red eyes. They fixed themselves on Jan’s set face. They burst into a flame of sudden recognition. “Now I remember! Now I remember! I told him I’d seen him——” He stopped himself with a gleam of inspired cunning. He had nearly defeated his immediate ends. He looked Jan deliberately up and down, did the same by Haigh, and only then snatched up his ugly bludgeon. “You’d better be careful with that,” snapped Haigh, with the face which had terrorised generations of young boys. “And the sooner you clear out altogether, let me tell you, the safer it’ll be for you!”