It was prettily wooded, at least he called it prettily wooded, within easy walking distance of the village of Arkabye, and about a quarter of a mile from the site of an ancient barrow that had just been removed to make way for several cottages. Fitzsimmons loved beeches, particularly copper beeches, which he noticed flourished here exceedingly, and the thought of living surrounded by these trees gave him infinite satisfaction. He finally bought a small piece of land in the coombe, getting it freehold at a ridiculously low figure, and erected a house on it, which he called "Shane Garth" after a remote ancestor. The first month seems to have passed quite uneventfully. It was true the children, Bobbie and Jane, said they heard noises, and declared someone always came and tapped against their window after they were in bed; but Fitzsimmons attributed these disturbances to mice and bats with which the coombe was infested. One thing, however, greatly disturbed his wife and himself, and that was the naughtiness of the children. Prior to their coming to the new house they had been as good as gold and had got on extremely well together; but the change of surroundings seemed to have wrought in them a complete change of character. They were continually getting into mischief of some sort, and hardly a day passed that they did not quarrel and fight, and always in a remarkably vindictive manner. Bobbie would creep up behind Jane, and pull her hair and pinch her, whilst Jane in revenge would break Bobbie's toys and do something nasty to him while he slept. Then their language was so bad. They used expressions that shocked everyone in the house, and no one could say where they had picked them up. But worst of all was their cruelty to animals. The nurse came to Mrs. Fitzsimmons one morning to show her a fowl that was limping across the yard in great pain. Bobbie had pelted it with stones and broken its leg. He was punished; but the very next day he and Jane were caught inflicting the most abominable tortures on a mouse. Jane rivalled the Chinese in the ingenuity of her cruelties. She scalded insects very slowly to death, and scandalised the village children by showing them a rabbit and sundry smaller animals which she had vivisected and skinned alive.