He gripped her wrist as he spoke. She uttered a little shriek of pain and anger--not of fear--and sprang back from him. She even made a feint of aiming a blow at him with her soft fist. “You dare to touch me!” she cried. “My nails are like thorns.” “Aye, and so’s your mind,” muttered the man. He looked at her in savage gloom a moment; then his broad face cleared, and he grinned in a conciliatory manner. “Come, missy,” he said, with an upward jerk of his chin. “We’ll be good friends, I can see. I not expeerunce spurit in a gal without knowing how to admire it. Of course if you’re set on havin’ a secret from old Joe, Joe’s not the man to appint to find it out. His wit’s a rumfusticus sort o’ target to put up agen your bright arrers. I only axed out o’ curiosity--has you ever heard tell of a Lake of Wine?--and no, says you.” The girl was silent. “You never did, now did you?” said the man, his face all one bunch of geniality. She nodded and laughed in an elfin manner. “Perhaps I did,” she said. “What then?” He breathed out a great grunt of satisfaction. “I thought so,” said he. “Well, what’s become on it?” She was laughing again, when Dennis’s voice came from a distance, calling her. At the sound she sprang forward immediately, evaded Mr. Corby, who had made a clutch at her, and was sped out of sight up the drive before he could collect his faculties. “Missy!” he had called, as she ran from him. “You and me must meet agen and have a long talk. Missy! mum’s the word!” but she had given no sign of hearing him. Left by himself, the fellow plunged into a ruminative mood; spat thoughtfully upon the ground; and then all of a sudden made rapidly for the gate and vanished up the road. CHAPTER X. Mr. Tuke and his man were employed upon a very profitless and monotonous task. The one--the first--was engaged in drawing stagnant water from a well in a bucket; the other received and toiled away with each vessel-full in succession, and flung it broadcast about the garden. They had cleared from the well-rim the torn earth and rubbish that encumbered it. A flap of wood had originally protected the mouth of the hole; but the slobbering tooth of Time had chewed this to the veriest pulp, upheld only by the clutch of the grass roots that had spread over and beyond it, and it had become the merest question of accident as to whose foot should first break into the pitfall. Despite the unchancy look of the place, measurement with a plumb revealed the fact that not so much as four feet of dead water lay at the bottom of the inky funnel; and this four feet Mr. Tuke had set himself patiently to withdraw, in fulfilment of a certain promise made to a couple of rather colourless _beaux yeux_.