That hero, grinning, moved forward to Jeremy, but the one who had already spoken broke out: “Let him out. We don’t want him. . . . And don’t you come back again!” he suddenly shouted. “I will,” Jeremy shouted in return, “if I want to!” And then, I regret to say, took to his heels and ran pell-mell down the road. IV Now this was an open declaration of war and not lightly to be disregarded. Jeremy said not a word of it to anyone, not even to the wide-eyed Mary who had been waiting in a panic of terror under the oak tree, like the lady in Carpaccio’s picture of St. George and the Dragon, longing for her true knight to return, all “bloody and tumbled,” to quote Miss Jane Porter’s “Thaddeus.” He was not bloody nor was he tumbled, but he was serious-minded and preoccupied. This was all very nice, but it was pretty well going to spoil the holidays: these fellows hanging round and turning up just whenever they pleased, frightening everybody and perhaps—this sudden thought made, for a moment, his heart stand still—doing something really horrible to Hamlet! He felt as though he had the whole burden of it on his shoulders, as though he were on guard for all the family. There was no one to whom he could speak. No one at all. For several days he moved about as though in enemy country, looking closely at hedges, scanning hill horizons, keeping Hamlet as close to his side as possible. No sign of the ruffians, no word of them at home; they had faded into smoke and gone down with the wind. Suddenly, one morning when he was in a hollow of the downs throwing pebbles at a tree, he heard a voice: “Hands up, or I fire!” He turned round and saw the eldest of the quartette quite close to him. Although he had spoken so fiercely, he was not looking fierce, but, rather, was smiling in a curious crooked kind of way. Jeremy could see him more clearly than before, and a strange enough object he was. He was wearing a dirty old pair of flannel cricketing trousers and a grubby shirt open at the neck. One of his eyes was bruised and he had a cut across his nose, but the thing in the main that struck Jeremy now was his appearance of immense physical strength. His muscles seemed simply to bulge under his shirt, he had the neck of a prize-fighter. He was a great deal older than Jeremy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age. His eyes, which were grey and clear, were his best feature, but he was no beauty, and in his dirty clothes and with his bruises he looked a most dangerous character. Jeremy called Hamlet to him and held him by the collar. “All right,” the ruffian said; “I’m not going to touch your dog.” “I didn’t think you were,” said Jeremy, lying. “Oh, yes, you did. I suppose you think we eat dog-flesh and murder babies. Lots of people do.”