Then the great adventure occurred. One afternoon the sun shone so gloriously that Jeremy was blinded by it, blinded and dream-smitten so that he sat, perched on the garden wall of the rectory, staring before him at the glitter and the sparkle, seeing nothing but, perhaps, a little boat of dark wood with a ruby sail floating out to the horizon, having on its boards sacks of gold and pearls and diamonds—gold in fat slabs, pearls in white, shaking heaps, diamonds that put out the eyes, so bright they were—going ... going ... whither? He does not know, but shades his eyes against the sun and the boat has gone, and there is nothing there but an unbroken blue of sea with the black rocks fringing it.

Mary called up to him from the garden and suggested that they should go out and pick flowers, and, still in a dream, he climbed down from the wall and stood there nodding his head like a mandarin. He suffered himself to be led by Mary into the high-road, only stopping for a moment to whistle for Hamlet, who came running across the lawn as though he had just been shot out of a cannon.

It can have been only because he was sunk so deep in his dream that he wandered, without knowing it, down over the beach, jumping the hill-stream that intersected it, up the sand, past the church, out along the road that led straight to the forbidden farm. Nor was Mary thinking of their direction. She was having one of her happy days, her straw hat on the back of her head, her glasses full of sunlight, her stockings wrinkled about her legs, walking, her head in the air, singing one of her strange tuneless chants that came to her when she was happy.

There was a field on their right, and a break in the hedge. Through the break she saw buttercups—thousands of them—and loose-strife and snapdragons. She climbed the gate and vanished into the field. Jeremy walked on, scarcely realizing her absence. Suddenly he heard a scream. He stopped and Hamlet stopped, pricking up his ears. Another scream, then a succession, piercing and terrible.

Then over the field gate Mary appeared, tumbling over regardless of all audiences and proprieties, then running, crying, “Jeremy! Jeremy! Jeremy!” buttercups scattering from her hand as she ran. Her face was one question-mark of terror; her hat was gone, her hair-ribbon dangling, her stockings about her ankles. All she could do was to cling to Jeremy crying, “Oh, oh, oh! ... Ah, ah, ah!”

“What is it?” he asked roughly, his fear for her making him impatient. “Was it a bull?”

“No—no.... Oh, Jeremy! ... Oh, dear, oh, dear! ... The boys! ... They hit me—pulled my hair!”

“What boys?” But already he knew.

Recovering a little, she told him. She had not been in the field a moment, and was bending down picking her first buttercups, when she felt herself violently seized from behind, her arms held; and, looking up, there were three boys standing there, all around her. Terrible, fierce boys, looking ever so wicked. They tore her hat off her head, pulled her hair, and told her to leave the field at once, never to come into it again, that it was their field, and she’d better not forget it, and to tell all her beastly family that they’d better not forget it either, and that they’d be shot if they came in there.

“Then they took me to the gate and pushed me over. They were very rough. I’ve got bruises.” She began to cry as the full horror of the event broke upon her.

Jeremy’s anger was terrible to witness. He took her by the arm.

“Come with me,” he said.

He led her to the end of the road beyond the church.

“Now you go home,” he said. “Don’t breathe a word to anyone till I get back.”

“Very well,” she sobbed; “but I’ve lost my hat.”

“I’ll get your hat,” he answered. “And take Hamlet with you.”

He watched her set off. No harm could come to her there, in the open. She had only to cross the beach and climb the hill. He watched her until she had jumped the stream, Hamlet running in front of her, then he turned back.

He climbed the gate into the field. There was no one; only the golden sea of buttercups, and near the gate a straw hat. He picked it up and, back in the road again, stood hesitating. There was only one thing he could do, and he knew it. But he hesitated. He had been forbidden to enter the place. And, besides, there were four of them. And such a four! Then he shrugged his shoulders, a very characteristic action of his, and marched ahead.

The gate of the farm swung easily open, and then at once he was upon them, all four of them sitting in a row upon a stone wall at the far corner of the yard and staring at him.

It was a dirty, messy place, and a fitting background for that company. The farm itself looked fierce with its blind grey wall and its sullen windows, and the yard was in fearful confusion, oozing between the stones with shiny yellow streams and dank, coagulating pools, piled high with heaps of stinking manure, pigs wandering in the middle distance, hens and chickens, and a ruffian dog chained to his kennel.

The four looked at Jeremy without moving.

Jeremy came close to them and said, “You’re a lot of dirty cads.”

They made neither answer nor movement.

“Dirty cads to touch my sister, a girl who couldn’t touch you.”

Still no answer. Only one, the smallest, jumped off the wall and ran to the gate behind Jeremy.

“I’m not afraid of you,” said Jeremy (he was—terribly afraid). “I wouldn’t be afraid of a lot of dirty sneaks like you are—to hit a girl!”

Still no answer. So he ended:

“And we’ll go wherever we like. It isn’t your field, and we’ve just as much right to it as you have!”

He turned to go, and faced the boy at the gate. The other three had now climbed off the wall, and he was surrounded. He had never, since the night with the sea-captain, been in so perilous a situation. He thought that they would murder him, and then hide his body under the manure—they looked quite capable of it. And in some strange way this farm was so completely shut off from the outside world, the house watched so silently, the wall was so high. And he was very small indeed compared with the biggest of the four. No, he did not feel very happy.

Nothing could be more terrifying than their silence; but, if they were silent, he could be silent too, so he just stood there and said nothing.

“What are you going to do about it?” suddenly asked the biggest of the four.

“Do about what?” he replied, his voice trembling in spite of himself; simply, as it seemed to him, from the noisy beating of his heart.

“Our cheeking your sister.”

“I can’t do much,” Jeremy said, “when there are four of you, but I’ll fight the one my own size.”

That hero, grinning, moved forward to Jeremy, but the one who had already spoken broke out:

“Let him out. We don’t want him.... And don’t you come back again!” he suddenly shouted.

“I will,” Jeremy shouted in return, “if I want to!” And then, I regret to say, took to his heels and ran pell-mell down the road.