It came, just as suddenly, as for a romantic climax it should have come.

On the afternoon that followed the friendship-swearing Humphrey did not appear at the accustomed place. Jeremy waited for several hours and then went melancholy home. At breakfast next morning there were those grown-up, mysterious allusions that mean that some catastrophe, too terrible for tender ears, is occurring.

“I never heard anything so awful,” said Aunt Amy.

“It’s so sad to me,” said Jeremy’s mother, sighing, “that people should want to do these things.”

“It’s abominable,” said Mr. Cole, “that they were ever allowed to come here at all. We should have been told before we came.”

“But do you really think——” said Aunt Amy.

“I know, because Mrs.——”

“But just fancy if——”

“It’s quite possible, especially when——”

“What a dreadful thing that——”

Jeremy sat there, feeling as though everyone were looking at him. What had happened to Humphrey? He must go at once and find out.

He slipped off after breakfast, and before he reached the bottom of the downs, heard shouts and cries. He ran across the beach and was soon involved in a crowd of farmers, women, boys and animals all shouting, crying out and barking together. Being small he was able to worry his way through without any attention being paid to him; indeed, everyone was too deeply excited by what was happening in the yard of the farm to notice small boys. When at last he got to the gate and looked through, he beheld an extraordinary scene. Among the cobbles and the manure heaps and the filth many things were scattered—articles of clothing, some chairs and a table, some pictures, many torn papers. The yard was almost filled with men and women, all of them apparently shouting and screaming together. A big red-faced man next to Jeremy was crying over and over again: “That’ll teach him to meddle with our women.” “That’ll teach him to meddle with our women....”

On the steps of the farm-house an extraordinary woman was standing, quite alone, no one near to her, standing there, contempt in her eyes and a curious smile, almost of pleasure, on her lips. Even to Jeremy’s young innocence she was over-coloured. Her face was crimson; she wore a large hat of bright green and a bright green dress with a flowing train. She did not move; she might have been painted into the stone. But Jeremy’s gaze (seen dimly and as it were upwards through a pair of high, widely extended farmer’s legs) was soon withdrawn from this highly coloured lady to the central figure of the scene. This was a man who seemed to Jeremy the biggest and blackest human he had ever seen. He had jet-black hair, a black beard, and struggling now in the middle of the yard between three rough-looking countrymen, his clothes were almost torn from the upper part of his body. His face was bleeding, and even as Jeremy caught sight of him he snatched one arm free and caught one of his captors a blow that sent him reeling. For one instant he seemed to rise above the crowd, gathering himself together for a mighty effort; he seemed, in that second, to look towards Jeremy, his eyes staring out of his head, his great chest heaving, his legs straining. But at once four men were upon him and began to drive him towards the gate, the crowd bending back and driving Jeremy into a confusion of thighs and legs behind which he could see nothing. Then suddenly once more the scene cleared, and the boy saw a figure run from the house, crying something, his hand raised. Someone caught the figure and stayed it; for a second of time Jeremy saw Humphrey’s face flaming with anger. Then the crowd closed round.

At the same instant the black man seemed to be whirled towards them, there was a crushing, a screaming, a boot seemed to rise from the ground of its own volition and kick him violently in the face and he fell down, down, down, into a bottomless sea of black pitch.