"Yes--I keep my own opinion!" he repeated, stupidly. "You've got the better of me just now--but you won't always, my pert Cock Robin! You won't always. Don't you think it! Briar Farm and I may part company--but there's a bigger place than Briar Farm--there's the world!--that's a wide field and plenty of crops growing on it! And the men that sow those kind of crops and reap them and bring them in, are better farmers than you'll ever be! As for your girl!"--here his face darkened and he shook his fist towards the lattice window behind which slept the unconscious cause of the quarrel--"You can keep her! A nice 'Innocent' SHE is!--talking with a man in her bedroom after midnight!--why, I wouldn't have her as a gift--not now!" Choking with rage, Clifford sprang towards him again--Landon stepped back. "Hands off!" he said--"Don't touch me! I'm in a killing mood! I've a knife on me--you haven't. You're the master--I'm the man--and I'll play fair! I've my future to think of, and I don't want to start with a murder!" With this, he turned his back and strode off, walking somewhat unsteadily like a blind man feeling his way. Clifford stood for a moment, inert. The angry blood burned in his face,--his hands were involuntarily clenched,--he was impatient with himself for having, as he thought, let Landon off too easily. He saw at once the possibility of mischief brewing, and hastily considered how it could best be circumvented. "The simplest way out of it is to make a clean breast of everything," he decided, at last. "Tomorrow I'll see Uncle Hugo early in the morning and tell him just what has happened." Under the influence of this resolve, he gradually calmed down and re-entered the house. And the moonlight, widening and then waning over the smooth and peaceful meadows of Briar Farm, had it all its own way for the rest of the night, and as it filtered through the leafy branches of the elms and beeches which embowered the old tomb of the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin it touched with a pale glitter the stone hands of his sculptured effigy,--hands that were folded prayerfully above the motto,--"Mon coeur me soutien!" CHAPTER V