"Oh, I think so," said Mr Daintree, with a laugh. And then he began to discuss the war news in that morning's paper, which soon led round to the events wherewith our story opens. "That must have been after the fashion of our old Town and Gown rows at Oxford," said the Vicar. "They are a thing of the past now, I'm told." "And a good thing too," struck in his daughter. "What horrid savage creatures men are. Never happy unless they are fighting." "Don't know. I much prefer running away," said Raynier. "Pity you didn't carry out your preference. Then you wouldn't have come down here looking such a sight," with a glance at his somewhat disfigured visage. "And there'd have been one Oriental the less in the world. Phew! that was a vicious mob if ever there was one. By the way there's a saying that if you rescue anybody he's bound to do you a bad turn. Wonder if it'll hold good here, and if in the order of fate that chap and I will meet again out there. Stranger things have come off." "Only in books," said Cynthia, contemptuously. "No--in real life. I could tell you of at least three remarkable if not startling circumstances of the kind that have come to my knowledge, but I won't, for two reasons--one that they wouldn't interest you--two, that you wouldn't believe a word of them." "What are you going to do to-day, Herbert?" said the Vicar. "Fish. You coming with me, Cynthia?" "No." "Meaning I'm not fit to be seen with," answered Raynier, interpreting her glance. "If you will go getting yourself disfigured in common street brawls you must expect to suffer for it. So low, I call it." She was in a horrible humour that morning--so much was evident. Raynier wondered how she would receive the news of the loss of the malacca cane, and felt steeled to tell her about it then and there. In another moment he would have done so when an interruption occurred. A girl's voice came singing down the passage, and its owner burst into the room. "Hallo, Herbert. You're jolly late again. I expect you have been catching it," with a glance at the thunder-cloud on her elder sister's face. This was the Vicar's youngest daughter, aged nineteen; there were two between her and the other, both married, likewise sons, helping to buttress up the Empire in divers colonies. "Right you are. I have. I'm going to try for a trout or two, Silly. Feel like coming along?" "I sha'n't if you call me that," answered the girl, with a shade of her sister's expression coming over her face; "that," however, not being an epithet but a teasing abbreviation of her own name--Sylvia. "All right. I withdraw the Silly." "Then I'll go. But isn't Cynthia going?" "She says I'm too ugly just at present," returned Raynier, tranquilly. "And I believe I am." "Yes. You're rather a sight," with a deliberate glance at his damaged figurehead. "Never mind. There's no one to see us here. Where are we going?" "How about the hole below Blackadder Bridge?"