'Oh? Eh? Don't say old Harry don't know nothing, that's all. I've fixed his flint, anyhow.' 'Ah! Smith!' shouted the squire out of his study window, with a cheerful and appropriate oath. 'The very man I wanted to see! You must lead these keepers for me to-night. They always fight better with a gentleman among them. Breeding tells, you know--breeding tells.' Lancelot felt a strong disgust at the occupation, but he was under too many obligations to the squire to refuse. 'Ay, I knew you were game,' said the old man. 'And you'll find it capital fun. I used to think it so, I know, when I was young. Many a shindy have I had here in my uncle's time, under the very windows, before the chase was disparked, when the fellows used to come down after the deer.' Just then Lancelot turned and saw Argemone standing close to him. He almost sprang towards her--and retreated, for he saw that she had overheard the conversation between him and her father. 'What! Mr. Smith!' said she in a tone in which tenderness and contempt, pity and affected carelessness, were strangely mingled. 'So! you are going to turn gamekeeper to-night?' Lancelot was blundering out something, when the squire interposed. 'Let her alone, Smith. Women will be tender-hearted, you know. Quite right--but they don't understand these things. They fight with their tongues, and we with our fists; and then they fancy their weapons don't hurt--Ha! ha! ha!' 'Mr. Smith,' said Argemone, in a low, determined voice, 'if you have promised my father to go on this horrid business--go. But promise me, too, that you will only look on, or I will never--' Argemone had not time to finish her sentence before Lancelot had promised seven times over, and meant to keep his promise, as we all do. About ten o'clock that evening Lancelot and Tregarva were walking stealthily up a ride in one of the home-covers, at the head of some fifteen fine young fellows, keepers, grooms, and not extempore 'watchers,' whom old Harry was marshalling and tutoring, with exhortations as many and as animated as if their ambition was 'Mourir pour la patrie.' 'How does this sort of work suit you, Tregarva, for I don't like it at all! The fighting's all very well, but it's a poor cause.' 'Oh, sir, I have no mercy on these Londoners. If it was these poor half-starved labourers, that snare the same hares that have been eating up their garden-stuff all the week, I can't touch them, sir, and that's truth; but these ruffians--And yet, sir, wouldn't it be better for the parsons to preach to them, than for the keepers to break their heads?' 'Oh?' said Lancelot, 'the parsons say all to them that they can.' Tregarva shook his head.