Anne hitched up her basket again and jerked her thumb in the direction of the house. “Will ’ee come in?” she inquired; and without waiting for a reply led the way through the yard, over a kind of wooden dam which had been placed across the doorway, and finally into the damp and deserted tap-room, where an evil-smelling paraffin lamp was already burning. Having set down her burden and closed the door, she turned and faced the lawyer’s clerk. “Now then, what is it?” “Miss Clarke,” began Samuel respectfully and mysteriously, “a rumour has reached me of the villainous way in which Trooper Willcocks has trifled with your feelin’s. Now wait a bit, now wait a bit—” uplifting one hand as Anne was about to make some wrathful rejoinder. “You’d be quite in the right to object to my intrudin’ on so delic_ate_ a matter if there weren’t a _business_ side to it, but ye see there is a business side and that’s what I’ve come about. There’s woman’s rights as well as woman’s feelin’s. Ah, if it wasn’t for that, Miss Clarke, maybe some of us gay young men would find your sex even more _un_resistible than we do already. But the notion of a Breach of Prom., Miss, is enough to steady the liveliest of us.” He leered at her out of his cunning little eyes, and continued emphatically: “Maybe you didn’t know, Miss Clarke, as when a good-for-nothing young chap same as Trooper Willcocks comes philandering arter a lady that lady can have the law on him if he goes too far. Now there’s a strange report in the town what says Trooper Willcocks’ arm were round your waist t’other night, Miss Clarke.” Anne squinted down sideways at the singularly unattractive portion of her person just alluded to, as though wondering how Trooper Willcocks’ arm had ever got there; and indeed such a proceeding indicated an almost sublime degree of courage on the part of the gallant yeoman. “’Twas a very tender act,” pursued Cross, “but a tender act don’t count for nothin’ by itself without the words are compromisin’. Now, can you call to mind anythin’ as Trooper Willcocks _said_, Miss Clarke?” “An’ supposin’ I did I’d maybe have no fancy for repeatin’ of ’em,” retorted the lady with a faint increase of colour in her sallow cheeks. “He’d had a drop too much, Trooper Willcocks had, and he did give I a lot of impidence. _I_ didn’t take no notice of ’em—he did make I laugh at the time I d’ ’low, but—” Cross pricked up his ears. Anne’s admission denoted that the impression produced by the warrior had been even greater than he had supposed, for she was not as a rule given to seeing the humorous side of things. “’Tis this way, d’ye see,” he said, insinuatingly. “If we can prove as Trooper Willcocks went beyond a certain p’int in his lovin’ speeches we can take a action again him.” “An’ what ’ud be the good o’ that?”