Up and down marched Master Nathaniel, backwards and forwards bounced the cockchafer, hither and thither flitted its soft, dainty shadow. Then, suddenly, straight as a die, the cockchafer came tumbling down from the ceiling and, at the same time, Master Nathaniel--calling over his shoulder, "I must go up and see that boy"--dashed from the room. He found Ranulph in bed, sobbing his heart out, and as he looked at the piteous little figure he felt his anger evaporating. He laid his hand on the boy's shoulder and said not unkindly: "Come, my son; crying won't mend matters. You'll write an apology to Cousin Ambrose, and Uncle Polydore, and all the rest of them, tomorrow; and then--well, we'll try to forget about it. We're none of us quite responsible for what we say when we're out of sorts ... and I gather from your mother you've not been feeling quite the thing these past weeks." "It was something made me say it!" sobbed Ranulph. "Well, that's a nice, easy way of getting out of it," said Master Nathaniel more sternly. "No, no, Ranulph, there's no excuse for behaviour like that, none whatever. By the Harvest of Souls!" and his voice became indignant, "Where did you pick up such ideas and such expressions?" "But they're true! They're true!" screamed Ranulph. "I'm not going into the question of whether they're true or not. All I know is that they're not the things talked about by ladies and gentlemen. Such language has never before been heard under my roof, and I trust it never will be again ... you understand?" Ranulph groaned, and Master Nathaniel added in a kinder voice, "Well, we'll say no more about it. And now what's all this I hear from your mother about your being out of sorts, eh?" But Ranulph's sobs redoubled. "I want to get away! to get away!" he moaned. "Away? Away from where?" and there was a touch of impatience in Master Nathaniel's voice. "From ... from things happening," sobbed Ranulph. Master Nathaniel's heart suddenly contracted; but he tried not to understand. "Things happening?" he said in a voice that he endeavoured to make jocular. "I don't think anything very much happens in Lud, does it?" "All the things," moaned Ranulph, "summer and winter, and days and nights. All the things!" Master Nathaniel had a sudden vision of Lud and the surrounding country, motionless and soundless, as it appeared from the Fields of Grammary. Was it possible that Ranulph, too, was a real person, a person inside whose mind things happened? He had thought that he himself was the only real person in a field of human flowers. For Master Nathaniel that was a moment of surprise, triumph, tenderness, alarm. Ranulph had now stopped sobbing, and was lying there quite still. "The whole of me seems to have got inside my head, and to hurt ... just like it all gets inside a tooth when one has toothache," he said wearily.