Richard Hand was left all of a tremble. “Killed him myself!” A self-confessed murderer! Good God, what was the world coming to that such men stalked about in it! IX Tommy Lupton had made up his mind to knock the block off Guy Vanton, and no suitable pretext or occasion offering, he went around to the Vanton house one day and rather awkwardly invited the objectionable Guy to take a walk with him. Guy Vanton, with a flicker of surprise which changed quickly into a look of pleasure, accepted the invitation. The two boys started north toward the woods encircling a small pond. They said little to each other at first. Tommy was concerned only to reach a small clearing in the woods, a place carpeted with pine needles and reasonably secure from intrusion by passersby. Guy was puzzled by Mr. Lupton’s stride and a feeling that this was somehow less a pleasure stroll than an errand. “You’re almost through High School, aren’t you?” asked Mr. Vanton. “Year more,” returned Tommy, going rapidly ahead on the wood path. “Shall you go to college after that?” “Cornell,” Tommy informed him. “For the engineering course?” guessed Guy amicably. “For the crew,” corrected Tommy. “I’ve never rowed,” Guy commented, finding it difficult to make conversation at the pace they were travelling. “Except a little, on the Seine near Paris, just for sport.” “Bragging of where he’s been,” thought the grim young man beside Mr. Vanton. “I’ll give him something to brag about!” Aloud he said: “Ever box?” “No. I’ve had fencing lessons. I used to wrestle a little. Nothing else much.” They had gained the clearing. Tommy moved to the centre of it and then turned and faced his companion. “I’ve brought you up here to tell you something,” he began, white-faced and with blazing eyes. “You--you’ve got to have nothing to do with--with her--with Mermaid,” Tommy found it distasteful to name the woman in the case, “from now on or I’ll knock your block off. I think I’ll just do it, anyway,” shouted Tommy, his fury, the accumulation of weeks of suffering, breaking forth. “You don’t box, but you say you can wrestle. I’m going to hit you and you can clinch and we’ll see who comes out on top! Being a--a _damn_ foreigner I suppose you won’t fight fair, but if you try biting or gouging I’ll _get_ you, don’t you forget it!” Guy Vanton, open-mouthed with surprise at the first few words, had reddened with anger. His curious, wild-animal eyes, ordinarily so shy, had lost their light and were fixed steadily but unseeingly on the boiling young man confronting him. The colour left his face. He lowered his eyes, stepped back several paces, muttered, “_En garde_,” and awaited Tommy’s onset.