Alf departed aggrieved, and obviously suggesting that the Colonel was to blame. He walked away with downward eyes. Suddenly the Colonel saw him pause, creep to the cliff-edge, and peep over. Then he came back to the hostel in a stealthy bustle. "Go and look for yourself then, sir, if you don't believe me!" he cried in the tone of one rebuffing an unjust accusation. "You're a Magistrate. Police ought to stop it I say. Public 'arlotry I call it." The Colonel's face became cold and very lofty. "No, Caspar. I don't do that sort of thing," he said. Alf, muttering excuses, departed. The Colonel watched him walk along the dotted coast-guard track and disappear round the shoulder of the coombe. Then he rose and strolled out to meet Ernie who was approaching. As he did so he heard voices from the beach beneath him and peeped over. Ruth, on her hands and knees amid the chalk boulders at the foot of the cliff, was smoothing the sand and spreading something on it. A few yards away Joe was standing at the edge of the tide, which was almost high, flinging pebbles idly into the water. Some earth dislodged from the Colonel's feet and made a tiny land-slide. The woman on her hands and knees in the growing dusk beneath looked up and saw the man standing above her. She made no motion, kneeling there; facing him, fighting him, mocking him. "Having a nice time together?" he asked genially. "Just going to, thank-you kindly," Ruth replied and resumed her occupation of sweeping with her hands. The Colonel turned to find Ernie standing beside him and burning his battle-flare. "Lucky I see you coming, sir," he said, trembling still. "Else I might ha done him a mischief." "Who?" "Alf. Insultin her and me. Met him just along back there in Meads by the _Ship_." "Go easy, Caspar," said the Colonel quietly. "I remember that left-handed punch of yours of old. It's a good punch too; but keep it for the enemies of your country." Ernie was hugging a big biscuit-box under his arm. "What you got there?" asked the other. Ernie grinned a thought sheepishly. "It's Joe's birthday," he said. "We are having a bit of a do under the cliff." He hovered a moment as though about to impart a confidence to the other; and then disappeared down the little track to the beach beneath at the trot, his shoulders back, and heels digging in, carrying a slither of chalk with him. "'Come into my parlour,' said the spider to the fly," muttered the Colonel as he turned into Undercliff. "Poor fly!" CHAPTER XXVII THE GROWING ROAR The avalanche, once started, was moving fast now. The Irish Nationalists who had lost faith in the power of the Government and the will of the Army to protect them, had decided at last to arm in view of the default of the law that they might resist invasion from the North-East.