"Peter," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes, "I don't see but what I shall have to discharge you. I should never dare let you drive past Mrs. Booth-Higby's again." "There's nothin' to fear," said Peter, tranquilly. "She won't recognize me, ma'am. Mrs. Booth-Higby's eyes ain't focussed to see a groom." VIII A USURPED PREROGATIVE Peter scooped a quart of oats into a box, took out the bottle of liniment the veterinary surgeon had left, and started, grumbling, for the lower meadow. Trixy had hurt her foot, and it was Billy's fault. A groom who knew no better than to tie a horse to a barbed-wire fence on a day when the flies were bad, ought, in Peter's estimation, to be discharged. He had some trouble in catching Trixy and applying the liniment, but he finally accomplished the matter, and dropped down to rest in the shade of the straggling hedge that divided the grounds of Willowbrook from Jasper Place. He lighted his pipe and fell to a lazy contemplation of the pasture--his thoughts neither of Trixy nor the cows nor anything else pertaining to his duties, but now as always playing with a glorified vision of Annie, the prettiest little parlour-maid in the whole wide world. He was completely lost to his surroundings, when the sound of pistol shots on the other side of the hedge recalled him to the present with a jerk. "What are them young devils up to now?" he muttered, as he raised himself to look through the branches. A group of boys was visible down on the Jasper beach, firing, somewhat wildly, toward a target they had set up on the bank. Peter squinted his eyes and peered closely; one of the boys was Bobby Carter, and Peter more than suspected that the revolver was his father's. The boy had been strictly forbidden to play with firearms, and Peter's first impulse was to interfere; but on second thoughts he hesitated. Bobby was very recently thirteen, and was feeling the importance of no longer being a little boy. He would not relish being told to come home and mind his father. While Peter stood hesitating, a sudden frightened squawk rang out, and he saw one of Mr. Jasper's guinea fowls fly a few feet into the air and plump heavily to the ground. At the same instant Patrick appeared at the top of the meadow, bearing down upon the scene of the crime, shouting menacingly as he advanced. The boys broke and ran. They came crashing through the hedge a few feet from Peter and made for cover in a clump of willows. Peter recognized them all--Bobby and Bert Holliday and the two Hartridge boys, the latter the horror of all well-regulated parents. He saw them part, the two Hartridge boys heading for the road, while Bobby and Bert Holliday turned toward the house, keeping warily under the bank, Bobby buttoning the revolver inside his jacket as he ran. Peter crouched under the branches and laid low; he had no desire to be called into the case as witness.