Now this was an open declaration of war and not lightly to be disregarded. Jeremy said not a word of it to anyone, not even to the wide-eyed Mary who had been waiting in a panic of terror under the oak tree, like the lady in Carpaccio’s picture of St. George and the Dragon, longing for her true knight to return, all “bloody and tumbled,” to quote Miss Jane Porter’s “Thaddeus.” He was not bloody nor was he tumbled, but he was serious-minded and preoccupied.

This was all very nice, but it was pretty well going to spoil the holidays: these fellows hanging round and turning up just whenever they pleased, frightening everybody and perhaps—this sudden thought made, for a moment, his heart stand still—doing something really horrible to Hamlet!

He felt as though he had the whole burden of it on his shoulders, as though he were on guard for all the family. There was no one to whom he could speak. No one at all.

For several days he moved about as though in enemy country, looking closely at hedges, scanning hill horizons, keeping Hamlet as close to his side as possible. No sign of the ruffians, no word of them at home; they had faded into smoke and gone down with the wind.

Suddenly, one morning when he was in a hollow of the downs throwing pebbles at a tree, he heard a voice:

“Hands up, or I fire!”

He turned round and saw the eldest of the quartette quite close to him. Although he had spoken so fiercely, he was not looking fierce, but, rather, was smiling in a curious crooked kind of way. Jeremy could see him more clearly than before, and a strange enough object he was.

He was wearing a dirty old pair of flannel cricketing trousers and a grubby shirt open at the neck. One of his eyes was bruised and he had a cut across his nose, but the thing in the main that struck Jeremy now was his appearance of immense physical strength. His muscles seemed simply to bulge under his shirt, he had the neck of a prize-fighter. He was a great deal older than Jeremy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age. His eyes, which were grey and clear, were his best feature, but he was no beauty, and in his dirty clothes and with his bruises he looked a most dangerous character.

Jeremy called Hamlet to him and held him by the collar.

“All right,” the ruffian said; “I’m not going to touch your dog.”

“I didn’t think you were,” said Jeremy, lying.

“Oh, yes, you did. I suppose you think we eat dog-flesh and murder babies. Lots of people do.”

The sudden sense that other folk in the world also thought the quartette outlaws was new to Jeremy. He had envisaged the affair as a struggle in which the Cole family only were engaged.

“Eat babies!” Jeremy cried. “No! Do you?”

“Of course not,” said the boy. “That’s the sort of damned rot people talk. They think we’d do anything.”

He suddenly sat down on the turf, and Jeremy sat down too, dramatically picturing to himself the kind of thing that would happen did his father turn the corner and find him there amicably in league with his enemy. There followed a queer in-and-out little conversation, bewildering in some strange way, so that they seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the thick velvet pile of the green downs, lost to all the world that was humming like a top beyond the barrier.

“I liked your coming into the yard about your sister. That was damned plucky of you.”

For some reason hidden deep in the green down Jeremy had never before known praise that pleased him so deeply. He flushed, kicking the turf with the heels of his boots.

“You were cads to hit my sister,” he said. He let Hamlet’s collar go, and the dog went over and smelt the dirty trousers and sniffed at the rough, reddened hand.

“How old are you?”

“Ten and a half.”

“I know. You’re called Cole. You’re the son of the parson at the rectory.”

Jeremy nodded his head. The boy was now sprawling his length, his head resting on his arms, his thick legs stretched out.

“You’re awfully strong,” Jeremy suddenly said.

The boy nodded his head.

“I am that. I can throw a cricket ball from here to the church. I can wrestle anyone. Box, too.”

He didn’t say this boastfully, but quite calmly, stating well-known facts. Jeremy opened his eyes wide.

“What are you called?” he asked.

“Humphrey Charles Ruthven.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“I don’t go. I was kicked out of Harrow. But it didn’t matter anyway, because my governor couldn’t pay the school bills.”

Expelled! This was exciting indeed.

Jeremy inquired, but his friend would give no reasons—only looked at him curiously and smiled. Then he suddenly went on in another tone: “You know everyone hates us, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know that,” said Jeremy. “Why is it?”

“Because we’re bad,” Humphrey said solemnly. “Our hand is against everyone, and everyone’s hand is against us.”

“But why?” asked Jeremy again.

“Well, for one thing, they don’t like father. He’s got, if you were speaking very politely, what you’d call a damned bad temper. By Jove, you should see him lose it! He’s broken three chairs in the farm already! I don’t suppose we shall be here very long. We’re always moving about. Then another reason is that we never have any money. Father makes a bit racing sometimes, and then we’re flush for a week or two, but it never lasts long.

“Why,” he went on, drawing himself up with an air of pride, “we owe money all over the country. That’s why we came down to this rotten dull hole—because we hadn’t been down here before. And another reason they don’t like us is because that woman who lives with us isn’t father’s wife and she isn’t our mother either. I should rather think not! She’s a beast. I hate her,” he added reflectively.

There was a great deal of all this that Jeremy didn’t understand, but he got from it an immense impression of romance and adventure.

And then, as he looked across at the boy opposite to him, a new feeling came to him, a feeling that he had never known before. It was an exciting, strange emotion, something that was suddenly almost adoration. He was aware, all in a second, that he would do anything in the world for this strange boy. He would like to be ordered by him to run down the shoulder of the down and race across the sands and plunge into the sea, and he would do it, or to be commanded by him all the way to St. Mary’s, ever so many miles, to fetch something for him. It was so new an experience that he felt exceedingly shy about it, and could only sit there kicking at the turf and saying nothing.

Humphrey’s brow was suddenly as black as thunder. He got up.

“I see what it is,” he said. “You’re like the rest. Now I’ve told you what we are, you don’t want to have anything more to do with us. Well, you needn’t. Nobody asked you. You can just go back to your old parson and say to him, ‘Oh, father, I met such a wicked boy to-day. He was naughty, and I’m never going to talk to him again.’ All right, then. Go along.”

The attack was so sudden that Jeremy was taken entirely by surprise. He had been completely absorbed by this new feeling; he had not known that he had been silent.

“Oh, no. I don’t care what you are or your father or whether you haven’t any money. I’ve got some money. I’ll give it you if you like. And you shall have threepence more on Saturday—fourpence, if I know my Collect. I say”—he stammered over this request—“I wish you’d throw a stone from here and see how far you can.”

Humphrey was immensely gratified. He bent down and picked up a pebble; then, straining backwards ever so slightly, slung it. It vanished into the blue sea. Jeremy sighed with admiration.

“You can throw,” he said. “Would you mind if I felt the muscle on your arm?” He felt it. He had never imagined such a muscle.

“Do you think I could have more if I worked at it?” he asked, stretching out his own arm.

Humphrey graciously felt it. “That’s not bad for a kid of your size,” he said. “You ought to lift weights in the morning. That’s the way to bring it up.” Then he added: “You’re a sporting kid. I like you. I’ll be here again same time to-morrow,” and without another word was running off, with a strange jumping motion, across the down.

Jeremy went home, and could think of nothing at all but his adventure. How sad it was that always, without his in the least desiring it, he was running up against authority. He had been forbidden to go near the farm or to have anything to do with the wild, outlawed tenants of it, and now here he was making close friends with one of the worst of them.

He could not help it. He did not want to help it. When he looked round the family supper-table how weak, colourless and uninteresting they all seemed! No muscles, no outlawry, no running from place to place to escape the police! He saw Humphrey standing against the sky and slinging that stone. He could throw! There was no doubt of it. He could throw, perhaps, better than anyone else in the world.

They met, then, every day, and for a glorious, wonderful week nobody knew. I am sorry to say that Jeremy was involved at once in a perfect mist of lies and false excuses. What a business it was being always with the family! He had felt it now for a long time, the apparent impossibility of going anywhere or doing anything without everybody all round you asking multitudes of questions. “Where are you going to, Jeremy?” “Where have you been?” “What have you been doing?” “I haven’t seen you for the last two hours, Jeremy. Mother’s been looking for you everywhere!”

So he lied and lied and lied. Otherwise, he got no harm from this wonderful week. One must do Humphrey that justice that he completely respected Jeremy’s innocence. He even, for perhaps the first time in his young life, tried to restrain his swearing. They found the wild moor at the back of the downs a splendid hunting-ground. Here, in the miles of gorse and shrub and pond and heather, they were safe from the world, their companions birds and rabbits. Humphrey knew more about animals than anyone in England—he said so himself, so it must be true. The weather was glorious, hot and gorse-scented. They bathed in the pools and ran about naked, Humphrey doing exercises, standing on his head, turning somersaults, lifting Jeremy with his hands as though he weighed nothing at all. Humphrey’s body was brown all over, like an animal’s. Humphrey talked and Jeremy listened. He told Jeremy the most marvellous stories, and Jeremy believed every word of them. They sat on a little hummock, with a dark wood behind them, and watched the moon rise.

“You’re a decent kid,” said Humphrey. “I like you better than my brothers. I suppose you’ll forget me as soon as I’m gone.”

“I’ll never forget you,” said Jeremy. “Can’t you leave your family and be somebody else? Then you can come and stay with us.”

“Stay with a parson? Not much. You’ll see me again one day. I’ll send you a line from time to time and let you know where I am.”

Finally, they swore friendship. They exchanged gifts. Humphrey gave Jeremy a broken pocket-knife, and Jeremy gave Humphrey his silver watch-chain. They shook hands and swore to be friends for ever.

And then the final and terrible tragedy occurred.