However, as the morning wore on and a wondrous quiet reigned at the top of the house, where the boys were engaged in painting fearsome animals and golliwogs on the jambs of the mantelpiece, Euphemia relented.

"Mary Jane," said she to the good-tempered, red-elbowed help in the kitchen, "you take up this plate o' gingerbread to the children. Pretty dears, they must be nigh starving!" And a goodly heap of gingerbread chunks travelled upstairs to the play-room, the door of which was unlocked.

It was over this welcome interruption that a wonderful new game was hatched.

"Clary, tell us about the mountain railway," said Oliver, seating himself on the edge of the table to munch contentedly.

His little sister had spent the previous winter with her ailing Mother in the Alps, at an hotel built on purpose for sick folk as high up in the air as was possible. And the boys were never tired of listening to her descriptions of the life so far up in the clouds and snows that the sun was nearly always shining hotly.

"I shouldn't mind being sick myself if it was only just to wear those funny snow-boots and walk over the hard snow up and down the mountain-sides," said Mark, reaching out for another piece of gingerbread.

"Oh, I'd like the tobogganing—the 'luging,' Clary calls it. Fancy spinning down in the moonlight!" cried one of the smaller boys, Johnny.

"No! Give me the riskiest of all—that queer railway up and down the great mountain. Tell us about it again, Clary," urged Oliver.

"That's called the funicular!" Very proud of being able to say the long word, Clary propped up her every-day doll beside her in the rocking-chair and, folding her mites of hands, proceeded to explain.

"It's quite a little young railway, y' know. It's only to take people up to the hotel on top of the Mont, where Mother and I lived last winter." Then she told the boys how the little train toiled up the sheer face of a great mountain to the clouds. And it had to descend, also, which was worse far. Clary shuddered and hid her blue eyes as she described that coming down, while the eyes of the boys fairly bolted over the mere thought of a journey so full of risks and perils.

"It must have been prime!" calmly observed Chris, always to the front if danger were in the air. "What did you think about, Clary, when the funicular came jolting down the steps hewn out for it in the steep mountain? What did it feel like? Come now, tell us," persisted Chris curiously.

"I fink it was like stepping out of a high window into the dark night," explained the little maid. "I didn't like it, an' I pulled the wire to shut my dolly's eyes, case she saw and it f'itened her, y' know!" The first thought of mother Clary had been for her waxen baby.

"Well, let's play at the funicular," suggested Oliver, when the gingerbread plate was cleared.

"Hooray! Down the banisters?" Mark was on fire in a moment. So were the other boys, and there was a stampede for the staircase.

"You can come, too, Clary!" shouted her brothers, and, bustling out of the rocking-chair, the little mother carefully carried her baby treasure, wrapped in a tiny shawl, for the perilous journey down the mountain-side.

The Tile House was of considerable size: it and the White House where Doctor George Carew lived were the only two large dwellings in the village of Allonby Edge. But of the two the Tile House was the higher, having an extra storey. The staircase was, consequently, a pretty long one, with only one landing at the upper floor, which led up to the play attic and servants' rooms.

"Couldn't have a better railway than this!" said Oliver, his head on one side as he regarded the length of banister.

Presently, the boys were tasting the fearful joy of precipitating themselves down the slippery route, which they grandly called the funicular.

The journeys were accompanied by a good deal of uproar, but the green baize swing-door shut off the sound from the ears of Euphemia and Mary Jane in the kitchen.

So the noisy crew had it all their own way.

Oliver was the driver of the train, and Mark the guard, the rest being passengers, and the traffic up and down to the hotel on the high Alps was something extraordinary.

"It's the going up that's the horrid difficulty!" panted Johnny, whose legs were rather short to interlace in the banister rails and thus heave himself upwards as the other boys did.

"Difficulties were made on purpose to be overcome," loftily said Mark, "and mountain railways are full of them. Now then, Clary," he shouted upstairs, "why don't you be a passenger? Aren't you getting tired of living up in the mountain hotel? Don't you want to come home and see your family?"

"Yeth, I do want to come home," piped a small voice from far away up under the roof. "So does my Hilda Rose," and Clary's little fair head peered over the top banister.

"Come along then!" recklessly shouted the boys. "Can't you get aboard the funicular yourself and start your journey?"

"What sillies girls are; just like women, always expecting somebody to hand them in and hand them out!" grumbled Mark, who, being the guard, felt bound to go up and start the lady passenger.

"Now then, ma'am," he said briskly, "you and your little girl had better get in. Train's going to start when I wave this green flag!"

"Oh, please hold my Hilda Rose until I get my seat," nervously said the passenger. "Oh! Mark—I mean Mr. Guard, do you think that Hilda Rose and me can go down wifout falling?"

"Why, of course!" scornfully answered the guard. "Haven't you been on a funicular before—the real thing? What's the use of bragging about the dangers you've been through if you can't face them a second time? Now, then, are you ready, ma'am?"

"Oh, no; not yet! Oh, but we sitted the other way in the real railway!" tearfully remonstrated the passenger, who had been settled by the guard on the banister face downwards.

"Can't help that, ma'am. It's the way we run trains. We gen'lly do things different from the foreigners. Now then, I'll tie your little girl on your back with her sash-ends, and, if you hold on tight, you will both get to the bottom all right!"

And she might have got to her destination in safety had the passenger been a boy accustomed to banister sliding instead of a weak, fragile little girl.

"Ready below there?" shouted down the guard. "There, ma'am, I've telegraphed down that you're coming!"

Mark's hand let go the wildly clinging passenger. A green flag was waved. A shrill whistling rang through the house.

The funicular was off!

Then came faint, muffled cries of terror: a swish through the air as the two passengers came sliding down: a louder shriek: and, lastly, a thud on the hall floor that made the hearts of the waiting group of boys stand quite still for a second or two.

At their feet was a huddled heap of blue frock and white pinafore, over which trailed a wisp of long fair hair. The heap was perfectly still, perfectly silent.

"Is she—is she——?" Mark's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and refused to finish the question when, tearing down the staircase, he reached the hall, his face livid under the red hair. Oliver was stooping over the senseless little figure, touching with frightened fingers now the little face, then the still small hands.

"Fetch Euphemia, quick!" the boy said hoarsely.

Like an arrow Johnny fled through the green baize door, and then, with an alarmed cry, old Euphemia ran into the hall.

"Oh, my pretty, my pretty!" Trembling like a leaf and ghastly white, the old woman crouched down to gently feel each little limb. And as she did so the boys covered their eyes to hide the sight.

"Did anyone of ye push her down? How was it, tell me true?"

"No, no; oh! nobody pushed her! She fell all the way down the banisters!" several of the boys spoke together.

"We were playing at the funicular, and she lost her balance!" The last words were sobbed out by Mark.

"Playing at the—what?" gasped Euphemia, in horror. "Boy!"—she clutched Oliver's shoulder—"flee to the White House and fetch Doctor George. Say it's life or death. The master's away for a long round on the hills at the farms. Tell them that. Go!"

"But, Euphemia—Uncle George would refuse to come inside our door!" stammered Oliver.

"Do as I bid ye, boy, and quick! Say to Dr. George these words from old Euphemia: 'The Lord do unto you and yours as ye do unto us in this sore need!' He will heed that message, if he's got a heart, not a stone, in him!"

With a shuddering groan, Oliver ran out into the pelting rain, bare-headed, on to the other end of Allonby Edge, where stood the White House with the red lamp, the home of the other Doctor Carew, the brother who had not spoken to Oliver's Father for three years.

As he raced along, with a heart beating in terror at what he had left behind on the hall-floor, there flitted through the boy's brain the old wondering curiosity as to what made the doctor-brothers such bitter enemies.

In the dining-room of the White House a group of children were staring idly out of the window, watching the village ducks, the only creatures really enjoying the deluge of rain on that wet Saturday.

The table was spread for early dinner, and the appetising sniffs stealing up from the kitchen reminded the other Carews that they were hungry.

"Oh, do look!" Gwen nudged Tony excitedly. "There's a boy with nothing on his head tearing along in the rain! He will fall over those wobbling ducks if he doesn't look out!"

"I do believe he is making for our house!" slowly said Tony, as he stared out eagerly.

"There's somebody taken suddenly ill, that's it! He's coming for Pater!" observed Traffy, a bright little urchin who had just stepped out of petticoats into a sailor suit and Latin.

"Oh, oh! it's one of the Carew boys from Tile House, and he is coming in here!" Trissy, the youngest, whispered, in an awestruck voice, and she shrank back from the window. The four Carews of the White House had brooded to the full as much as the young folk of the Tile House over the estrangement between their Fathers, though they had never dared to ask their parents any questions about the matter.

All the children knew this much, that old Grandpapa had been Doctor Mark Carew of Allonby Edge, and when he died his two sons succeeded to his practice as partners. In time the young doctors married, and the elder children remembered dimly that the Tile House and the White House had been like one home with two roofs.

Then came the mysterious quarrel that froze up that "good and joyful thing, dwelling together in unity." It was all so sad and heart-breaking that nobody ever ventured to question the two brothers thus living apart in enmity. The more you love anyone, the more terrible a thing it is to quarrel with that person.

So the breach had gone on widening with the years, and the little Carews had grown out of all knowledge of each other, especially as they bicycled every day to different schools in the county town. It was only in church indeed that they kept up any sort of acquaintance with each other's looks.

"Yes, it's one of the other Carews," Tony said gravely. "And Father's in the surgery: he drove up five minutes ago. What can be the matter? That boy is tearing at the surgery bell. Listen!"

With their hearts in their mouths the Carews tip-toed along the passage leading to the surgery-door, which was shut fast. There seemed to be a dreadful silence in the house. Mother was upstairs with the fretful baby of the family, and there was nobody to run to.

Behind the close-shut surgery-door a strange scene was going on. Sitting well back in his consulting-chair, his hands spread out, finger to finger, thumb to thumb, Doctor George was gazing sternly in silence at an eager little speaker.

"Oh, do come; do, Uncle George! Our Clary is killed, and Father's away on his rounds among the hill-farms!"

Oliver's teeth chattered in his head, and his little knees knocked together as he stood with the rain-drops falling from his bare head on to his little shoulders.

"Did your Mother send you here for me?" Doctor George asked harshly.

"No; oh, no! We dared not tell Mother! Clary fell from the top of the Tile House to the hall floor, and she's all white and still. And Euphemia lifted her arm, and it fell double!"

Dr. George suddenly sat up straight.

"Is it broken or is it a sprain?" he asked peremptorily.

"I—I don't know. I think she's killed!" answered the boy brokenly.

Oliver was nearly fainting from sheer fright, as Dr. George could see for himself.

"Come along, boy," he said sharply, and he gathered together two or three necessaries from the surgery-table while he spoke.

Presently two figures plunged out into the pouring rain.

"Father's gone with the other Carew! What can be the matter? Perhaps Uncle John's killed, and they're going to make it up!" whispered the girls.

"You are sillies!" scornfully said Tony. "How can people make it up if they're dead?"

Ah, how, Tony? The time for that has gone by, indeed, boy!

Of the two figures that fled through the rain, the doctor reached the Tile House first. In a trice he pushed aside Euphemia and he was kneeling beside the motionless little figure; and, presently, when he had gently probed the little form and lifted one limb after another, he groaned under his breath. This little, tender, fair-headed thing, with the face that reminded him so startlingly of his dead Mother, was sorely injured; perhaps fatally so. As yet, he knew not.

Without a word, he cautiously lifted the unconscious Clary in his strong arms, and signed to Euphemia to lead the way.

Then the door of the room he entered with his burden was shut, and the Carew boys huddled close together, a miserable group. What if they had killed the little, tender sisterling who was their queen and idol?

And Mother upstairs in her sick-room knew nothing as yet, while Father, away on his long hill-round, was equally ignorant. It seemed to make things so much more terrible to the little boys that they alone should know.

"Come away, beside the fire, dearies." Mary Jane beckoned them into the kitchen, and the wretched boys crept round the ruddy blaze, which seemed, somehow, like a friend, and they stretched out their cold hands to its warmth as they waited, too frightened to wonder aloud what was being done in that room where Euphemia and Uncle George were shut up with Clary.

When Mother's bell rang their hearts jumped into their mouths.

"No! none of you boys are going up!" said Mary Jane firmly. "Euphemia, she said as 'twas as much as my place was worth if I let the mistress know o' this before the doctor comes home. So I'll carry up her dinner-tray and keep my tongue atween my teeth, and you boys must bide quiet as quiet till we see!"

The boys shivered as Mary Jane, lifting up the tray, significantly nodded.

It was quite an hour after. Mary Jane, loyal to the core, had kept her ailing mistress in perfect ignorance of the terrible calamity, and the little boys still crowded round the kitchen fire waiting.

Suddenly every head was raised. "That's Peter's trot; don't you hear? Father's coming home!"

Each of the boys stood up. Who was to go out to meet the gig and tell the dreadful news to Doctor John?

"Perhaps I ought to do it!" said Mark, in a strangled voice. "I started the train, y' know! So I'll take all the blame on myself!"

Somehow the other boys thought poor Mark, for all his shock of red hair, looked exactly like one of the brave knights of old setting forth to battle. Old Peter, the doctor's horse, eager for his stable comforts and shelter, brought the gig round in fine style, and Doctor John alighted quickly, with the upward glance at Mother's window which he never forgot.

"Why, sonny," he began cheerily, then halted as, with a tweak at his Father's sleeve, Mark beckoned him indoors. "Is there anything the matter with Mother? Quick; speak, boy!" The doctor's voice was sharp with fear. But Mark could not speak, and Doctor John, with a heart of lead, followed the boy into the house.

"In there, Father! It's Clary, and it's all my fault!" Mark's voice had come back, but it was a mere whisper, and he pointed to the close-shut door.

Turning the door-handle quickly, Doctor John nearly fell backwards. Over the bed, on which lay a little figure, bent the brother to whom he had not spoken for three years, with his ear laid close to the little heart, listening to its fluttering beats, and one hand raised warningly at the sound of the opening door. The next moment the wonder-shock had passed. Without a word Doctor John was on his knees beside the bed, and Doctor George, glancing up, saw that it was Clary's Father who had entered. Then he stood up straight, and would have retreated hastily, but his forefinger was tight in the clutch of a weak, small hand. Doctor George was chained to the spot; he dared not move.

"She opened her eyes once, and gripped my finger like that!" he whispered awkwardly.

The Father did not speak, nor even look away from the white, still face. But, stretching across the bed, he laid a detaining hand on his brother's coat-sleeve.

It was quite late in the afternoon when the two doctors came out into the hall. The boys crept to the half-open kitchen door to listen eagerly.

"Thank God, and thank you, George, she will live!"

It was a strained harsh voice, but it was Father's, and the boys all pressed forward.

Then they hastily retreated, for, while the two doctors stood side by side, Father's head was bent on Uncle George's shoulder and their hands were clasped hard.

"They must be making it up!" whispered Oliver to his awestruck brothers.

And it was so. The breach of years was healed in a single afternoon. The brothers were once again friends. Whatever their quarrel had been—and neither the children of the Tile House nor the other Carews ever knew what it was about—it fled away like a morning mist in the face of a great peril, for death had come very close to little Clary that rainy Saturday.

It was many weeks before she left her bed, but when her own birthday came round Father carried her, covered with shawls, in to tea, and Clary could not believe her blue eyes.

On the table was a huge frosted white cake, with flags flying and "CLARE" in great letters upon it, while Mother, who had grown pounds better lately, smiled behind the army of cups and saucers.

But wonder of wonders, round and round the table, the guests were all Carews!

"'A motley crew' we are!" cheerfully announced Doctor George, and all the children radiantly clapped their hands at his joke. Even the White House baby, which had been carried to the feast, gurgled and crowed loudly on its Mother's lap.

And when they all pressed forward with their birthday gifts and to wish Clary many happy returns of the day, Mark, his ears as red as his hair, whispered under his breath: "I was just awf'lly sorry, Clary! An' I'll never, never forget that little girls and women are different from us rough boys!"

And Mark never will; nor will any of the Carew boys.