"Ah, Nipper!" said Hugh John lazily, handing up another sorrel stem to Elizabeth; "glad to see you, Nipper. Sit down and help to look for fat ones!" "You are mocking me, both of you!" cried poor Nipper blackly. His face was hot and angry, his eyes injected like his father's when in wrath, and his hands were clinched tight. "You came here to talk about me," he said hoarsely, bending forward towards them like a beast ready for the spring. "Nonsense!" said Hugh John; "we met by pure accident. I did not want any dinner, and Elizabeth wanted a breath of fresh air." "You lie! I do not believe you!" cried Nipper. "You will have to, Nipper," said Hugh John, who had not moved an inch. "_And_ why?" "Because _I_ say it!" said Hugh John quietly. "I do not tell lies!" "A likely story!" growled Nipper. "You were talking about me! I heard you. You will have to fight me--Hugh John Picton Smith!" "That we shall see," said Hugh John coolly. "What must be, must be. But there is a word or two to say first." "Talk!" cried Nipper. "Oh, that does no good to a fellow like me. You shall fight me, I tell you!" "Not before Elizabeth Fortinbras!" said Hugh John, taking off his cap with a quick, instinctive gesture of respect. "You and I can't behave like two angry dogs before her!" "You're afraid!" "Possibly," said Hugh John, "but not in any way _you_ would understand." Then Elizabeth Fortinbras took up speech. "Nipper Donnan," she said, "I won't pretend I don't know what you mean. You are driving me from the single happy place of refuge I have on earth. I cannot stay with your father and mother unless you stop pestering me. And then you talk about fighting. Why, Hugh John is nearly five years younger than you are----" "He is as tall!" growled Nipper. "Taller!" corrected Elizabeth coolly. "But if you behave like a whole menagerie of brutes, that won't make me care more about you. Hugh John is my brother; I have no other!" "_Umph!_" snorted Nipper, "he doesn't come and sit out by Esk-waterside with his sisters." I know that at that moment Hugh John's eye sought the deep purple stain of the Cave of Mystery, where he and I so often sat together. But he said nothing at all to his adversary. It might have been mistaken. It was to Elizabeth he spoke. "I have something to say to Nipper which you had better not hear," he remarked quietly. "Here is a special handful of sorrel to take home with you. Let me see you as far as the first lamp-post on my cycle. Then I will come back and speak with Nipper." They went, and Nipper sat on the empty log, gloomily cursing fate--but, educated by the experience of many years, never for a moment doubting that Hugh John would keep his word. He even timed him. He knew to within half-a-minute when the bright bull's-eye of his acetylene lantern would turn the corner of the Gypsies' Tryst. He saw it come. He stood up on his feet, and jerked his clenched hands once or twice forward into the gloaming.