"I know," she said, laughing a little and crying a little, as a girl will do. "I know, dear boy. I saw you do it." "You saw me thrash him!" he said, amazed. "But how? I don’t understand." "We all did!" she cried: "Uncle Jim and the Bishop and Mr. Trayne and me. Mr. Trayne came back and told us to come." "I see," said the boy, slowly. "I see. I think I’ll go and thank Mr. Trayne." But there are other things in this world more important even than a debt of gratitude to the most celebrated of Actors, and half an hour later the boy and the girl were still pacing slowly up and down the lawn. There were so many things to be discussed—so many glorious plans to be made for the future—the future out of which the blackness had vanished so completely. And it was with almost a feeling of reproach that the girl suddenly turned to him. "Why, boy!" she cried, "we’ve forgotten Tommy." "Tommy!" he said. "Why, so we have." He stared at her for a while, and there was a little quizzical smile on his lips. "It’s funny, isn’t it?" he went on slowly, "that the greatest thing the little chap has ever done for me he has done by his death." He took her in his arms and held her very close. "If he’d lived, it might have all come right—in time; but now——" And Hugh Dawnay finished his sentence in the only way such sentences can be finished. "Come in, you two youngsters." The General’s voice came cheerfully from the dining-room, and arm-in-arm they walked towards the open window. Half-way there they paused, and instinctively their eyes turned towards the old yew tree. "Why, there he is, boy," breathed the girl. "Don’t you see him, and the black mark on his neck and his tail wagging?" "It’s the shadows, darling," answered the boy. "The moonlight through the trees." Maybe, maybe. Who knows? Gently he led her on, and she passed into the room ahead of him. And from the path outside there rose once again into the soft summer night the farewell message of a friend to a friend: "Good hunting, old chap." _*IX — The Man with his Hand in his Pocket*_ *I* "I’ll take one card."