"Thanks, no, I’ve to meet a fellow!" He raised his hat and walked away. Sarah let them in at No. 35. She looked scared and spoke in a loud whisper. "Oh, missansir, there’s been murder done as sure as my name’s Sarah Jones! Hush! She’s in! The poor little dog! Its dying ’owls were pitiful! I allus knew that unchristian monkey-thing would do us a ’arm!" She managed to work on their feelings to a certain extent, although they knew that Jim had conceived a deep affection for Kate Kearney, which that young person returned with a disdainful and bullying sort of tolerance. They hurried up to the Stronghold, Denis produced the key, and they opened the door. The room presented a somewhat chaotic appearance; bits of Denis’s slippers strewed the floor; a fur rug distributed itself in bunches round the room; the table-cloth had been pulled off, and with it various books, papers, and a bowl of chrysanthemums. With the chaos a dead silence greeted them; they could see neither Kate Kearney nor Jim O’Driscoll. Molly gasped:— "Oh—they’re both killed!" Behind the easy chair they sat, two little mute, obstinate figures, palpably worn out, and each still holding on grimly to a battered thing of felt and ribbon that once had been a hat of Nell’s. In Jim’s thin little hands, as they gripped the hat, bunches of black fur were discernible, which told a tale. At their approach K.K. arose, panting, and renewed the struggle. She was very strong and Jim was very small. With her teeth fixed firmly in the felt, she pulled and pulled, backing all round the room, and at the other end of the hat came Jim, hopping, sliding, but never letting his hold slip. His pathetic little wizened face added to the ludicrousness of the spectacle. In the end Denis bethought him brilliantly of a way to end the struggle with fairness to both sides. He took a knife and sawed Nell’s hat in halves. Immediately each went straight for the piece the other held, and as each dropped its own piece, Nell picked them up, and the battle was perforce at an end. Jim fled, chattering with rage, to the top of the curtain, and Kate Kearney had resort to what no doubt she would have termed a hurt dignity, but what looked considerably like a fit of the sulks. "Now," said Denis, "how did that little beggar undo his cage door?" Nell said, still laughing:— "It’s just struck me that it’s rather hard on my hat!" *CHAPTER XIII* Denis was immersed, fathoms deep, in unutterable gloom. It was the all-important day, at last. That morning he had risen in wild spirits. "Don’t believe my poor old essay is so bad after all! Anyhow, what’s it matter?" At luncheon time he was still hilarious; at tea time down, down in the depths. His thermometer had been very much like that in regard to his speech, up and down, down and up, for the past week. "It’s tea time, Denis."