One of the boys nodded towards the burrow. "That's the stronghold, is it? Not much room to turn about in, I should say." They declined to express an opinion. "May I go in and have a look?" But that was not in the terms of their parole, and they sprang instantly to the defence of their hold. The young man of the towel was beginning to wonder if another pitched battle would be necessary before he could recover his missing property, when a diversion was suddenly created by an innocent outsider. A foolish young rabbit hopped over the shoulder of a neighbouring sand-hill to see what all the disturbance was about. In a moment the round stone clubs flew and the sense was out of him before he had time to twinkle an eye or form any opinion on the subject. With a whoop the boys sprang at him and resolved themselves instantly into a pyrotechnic whirl of arms and legs and red-hot faces and flying sand, as they fought for their prey. "Little savages!" said the young man, and did his best to separate them. But he might as well have attempted argument with a Catherine wheel in the full tide of its short life. And so he took to indiscriminate spanking wherever bare slabs of tumbling flesh gave him a chance, and presently, under the influence of his gentle suasion the combatants separated and stood panting and tingling. The _causus belli_ had disappeared beneath the turmoil of the encounter, but suddenly it came to light again under the workings of twenty restless little toes. They both instantly dived for it, and the fight looked like beginning all over again, when the long white arm shot in and secured it and held it up above their reach. "I say! Are you boys or tiger-cats?" he asked, as he examined them again curiously. "Carr'ns," panted one, while both gazed at the rabbit like hounds at the kill. "Yes, you said that before, but I'm none the wiser. Where do you live when you're clothed and in your right minds?--if you ever are," he added doubtfully. One of them jerked his head sharply in the direction of the great gray house away along the shore. "There?" Another curt nod. He had rarely met such unnatural reserve, even in Whitechapel, where pointed questions from a stranger are received with a very natural suspicion. Here, as there, it only made him the more determined to get to the bottom of it. But Whitechapel had taught him, among other things, that round-about is sometimes the only way home. "Why do you want to fight over a dead rabbit?" "I killed it." "Didn't. 'Twas me." "Well now, if you ask me, I should say you both killed it. How did you become such capital shots?" But to tell that would have needed much talk, so they only stared up at him. He saw he must go slowly. "Those are first-rate clubs. Did you make them?" Nods from both.