Dorothy got up and reached the broken assegai, which had about eight inches of the shaft, from its place over the mantelpiece. “Now then, Jeremy, if you would be so good as to sprawl upon your back on the floor, I will just show my uncle what happened.” Jeremy complied, not without grumbling about dirtying his dress-coat. “Now, Jeremy, my boy, where are you? O, there! Well, excuse my taking the liberty of kneeling on your chest, and holloa out if the assegai goes into you. If we are going to have a performance at all, it may as well be a realistic one. Now, uncle, you see when we finished rolling, which was just as this assegai snapped in two, as luck would have it I was uppermost, and managed to get my knee on my friend’s left arm and to hold his right with my left. Then, before he could get loose, I drove this bit of spear through the side of his throat, just there, so that it cut the jugular vein, and he died shortly afterwards; and now you know all about it.” Here Ernest rose and laid the spear upon the table, and Jeremy, entering into the spirit of the thing, began to die as artistically as a regard for his dress-coat would allow. Just then Dorothy, looking up, saw her grandfather Atterleigh’s distorted face peering round the wall of the ingle-nook, where he was sitting in the dark, and looking at the scene of mimic slaughter with that same curious gaze that he had worn on several occasions lately. He withdrew his head at once. “Get up, Jeremy!” said his sister, sharply, “and stop writhing about there like a great snake. You look as though you had been murdered; it is horrible!” Jeremy arose laughing, and, having obtained Dorothy’s permission, they all lit their pipes, and, sitting there in the fading light, fell to talking about that sad scene of slaughter, which indeed appeared that night to have a strange fascination for Mr. Cardus. He asked Ernest and Jeremy about it again and again—how this man was killed, and that?—did they die at once? and so on. The subject was always distressing to Ernest, and one to which he rarely alluded, full as it was for him of the most painful recollections, especially those connected with his dear friend Alston and his son.