Oh that sob! if she could only swallow it down and talk to him, this robber chief, this Robin Hood, as if she were not afraid! for sometimes these men are kind and do not hurt the weak. Lilias gazed, nothing but her eyes appearing, glowing through the gathering shade: then suddenly threw her brother off her lap in a transport of wild delight, “Oh Nello, Nello, Nello!” she cried, till the wood rang, “it is Mr. Geoff!” CHAPTER XXXVI. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. Geoff took the children home without let or hindrance. There was no inn near where they could pass the night; and as he had no legitimate right to their custody, and was totally unknown and very young, and might not awaken any lively faith in the bosom of authority as against the schoolmaster or the uncle, he thought it wisest to take them away at once. He managed to get some simplest food for them with difficulty--a little bread and milk--and made them lie down propped amid the cushions of a first-class carriage, which was to be hooked on to the evening train when it arrived. Before they left the little station he had the satisfaction of seeing Randolph Musgrave arrive, looking sour and sullen. Geoff did not know that Randolph had done anything unkind to the children. Certainly it was none of his fault that Lilias was there; but what good partisan ever entered too closely into an examination of the actual rights and wrongs of a question? Randolph might have been innocent--as indeed he was--of any downright evil intention; but this availed him nothing. Geoff looked out of the window of his own carriage as they glided away from the station, and gazed with intensest schoolboy pleasure on the glum and sour countenance of the churlish uncle, who, but for his own intervention, might have wrought destruction to those new babes in the wood. He shivered when he thought of the two helpless creatures lying under the brambles too frightened to move, and feeling to their hearts all the fantastic horrors of the darkness. Now, though still in movement, and undergoing still further fatigue, the absolute rest which had fallen upon their childish spirits from the mere fact that he was there, touched the young man to the heart. They were willing to let him take them anywhere; their cares were over. Nello had even made a feeble little attempt to shake his draggled plumes and swagger a little, sore and uncomfortable though he was, before he clambered into the carriage; and Lilias lay in the nest he had made for her, looking out with eyes of measureless content--so changed from those great, wistful, unfathomable oceans of anxiety and fear which had looked at him through the brambles! She put her hand into his as he settled himself in his corner beside her--the little soft child’s hand, which he warmed in his strong clasp, and which clung to him with a hold which did not relax even in her dreams; for she went to sleep so, holding him fast, feeling