“No matter who did it. One of you has thought fit to make a mock of me, and you must both pay the penalty.” The girl laughed scornfully. “You only wanted a pretext,” she said, “to get rid of us. I thought you would, sooner or later. Perhaps you put it there yourself.” Her voice was rising to bitterer significance, when she heard a sound at her side, and, turning, made a frantic clutch at her brother as he slid to the floor. His head came with a little thwack on the boards; and there he lay with clinched teeth and a face like a stone. Then--“Oh! oh!” she wailed, and threw herself down beside him. Mr. Tuke was very embarrassed and a little shocked. He took no resentment over the girl’s spirit, though he still firmly believed she lied about the skull. But after all, it was patently unjust to hold the man responsible for the cantrips of so unmanageable a charge. He seized a jug of water. “Here--pour some of this over him,” he said. “He’s fainted like a woman.” She looked up at him with fierce eyes; but she took the jug nevertheless. “He’s a better man than you!” she cried. “He can suffer and endure; and fight too, when there’s need.” She was human enough in her fearless championship of her own flesh and blood. The gentleman laughed uneasily, and, feeling himself under the circumstances a little _de trop_, left the hall, with a certain consciousness of shame tingling in his heels. Outside, he thought, “Did she get the better of me? If this sort of thing goes on, I shall lose the sense of how to be master in my house.” Stung by the thought, he threw open the door once more and looked in. “He’ll come round in a minute,” he said hardly. “Listen to me. I shall sleep out to-night. You can----” He broke off suddenly; paused a moment in indecision--then tip-toed gently away. The girl’s face had been drowned in tears as she bent over her brother. He passed to the neglected stables, and was fain to saddle his own horse and lead him forth and mount in the weed-choked yard. He rode down by way of the long slumberous drive. Its whole course was matted with woodland moss, smooth as green felt; and thereon the beeches, staking their aftermath of glory, flung golden counters softly, as if on a card-table. At the half-ruined lodge he paused, and dwelt upon its desolation curiously. Ivy, like a cluster of swarming snakes, held the writhed chimneys in a death-grip, and had fractured the spine of the gabled roof. The ribs of the structure showed through gaping rents, like those in a stranded ship. Not a melancholy window-place but gaped a black mouth, full of broken splints of teeth and dead sticks of sashes. The whole building seemed sunk into the moss and leafiness that engirdled it. He went out through the iron gate, and spurred along the road that was yet unfamiliar to him. The air was at once soft and keen as the taste of olives, and as such stimulated his new appetite for Nature.