Mephisto’s whole body seemed to collapse. His fund of resistance was gone. Something white was on the ground. The end of the tail, with its famous, magnificent, glorious, superb, white tuft was no longer attached to Mephisto’s body. The poodle gave one cry, a dreadful, unearthly, ghostly cry of terror, shame and abandonment, then, his tail between his legs, ran for his very life. V Ten minutes later Jeremy, looking out of the schoolroom window, beheld, tottering up the garden, a battered, dishevelled dog. A little trail of blood followed his wavering course. Hamlet looked up at the window, saw his master, feebly wagged his tail and collapsed. But as he collapsed he grinned. CHAPTER VI THE NIGHT RAIDERS I It will be always difficult to understand what drove Jeremy into this adventure. That on the very last night but one of his Christmas holidays, when he had every good reason for placating the powers and when he did, of his own nature, desire that he should leave everything behind him in the odour of sanctity, that at such a time he should take so wild and unnecessary a risk will always and for ever be a deep mystery. The end of these holidays he especially desired to clothe in tranquillity because of the painful manner in which they had begun. He really did wish to live at peace with his fellow men, and especially with his mother and father. His mother was easy, but his father! How were they ever to see the same way about anything? And yet he detected in himself a strange pathetic desire to be liked by his father and himself to like in return; had he only known it, his father felt precisely the same towards himself—but the gulf of two generations was between them. Indeed, on that very morning Mr. Cole had had a conversation with his brother-in-law Samuel about his son Jeremy. Mr. Cole was never at ease with his brother-in-law. He distrusted artists in general—his idea was that they were wasting the time that God had given them—and he distrusted his brother-in-law in particular because he thought that he often laughed at him, which indeed he often did. “I’m unhappy about Jeremy,” he said, looking at Samuel’s blue smock with dissatisfaction. He did wish that Samuel wouldn’t wear his painting clothes at breakfast-time. “Why?” asked Samuel. “I don’t think the boy’s improving. School seems to be doing him no good.” “Take him away, then,” said Samuel. “Really,” said Mr. Cole, “I wish you wouldn’t joke about these things. He must go to school.” “Send him to another school if this one isn’t satisfactory.” “No. Thompson’s is a good school. I’m afraid it’s in the boy, not the school, that the fault lies.” Samuel Trefusis said nothing. “Well, don’t you see what I mean about the boy?” Mr. Cole asked irritably.