“Oh that!  The window, you mean?  Well, not so much as if you had broken Jack’s head—­as you intended.”

There was some hint of returning grimness in Dick’s voice.  Robin made an ingratiating movement, leaning his rough head against his brother’s arm.

Dick went on, ignoring the unspoken appeal.  “You’ve got to stop it Robin.  If you don’t, there’ll be trouble—­worse trouble than you’ve had yet.  You don’t want to leave me, I suppose?”

“Leave you, Dicky?” Robin stared round in horror.  “Leave you?” he repeated incredulously.  “Go to prison, do you mean?”

Dick nodded.  “Something like it.”

“Dick!” Robin stared at him aghast.  “But—­you—­you’d never let them—­take me?”

“If you were to damage Jack—­or anyone else—­badly, I shouldn’t be able to prevent it.”  Dick said rather wearily.  “If it came to that—­I shouldn’t even try.”

“Dick!” Robin gasped again, then passionately; “But I—­I—­I couldn’t live—­away from you!  I’d—­I’d kill myself!”

“No, you wouldn’t.  You wouldn’t get the chance.”  Dick was staring straight before him down the room, as if he watched some evil vision against the darkness.  “People aren’t allowed to kill themselves in prison.  If they try to do anything of that sort, they’re tied down till they come to their senses.  If they behave like brutes, they’re treated as such, till at last they turn into that and nothing else.  And then—­God help them!”

A sudden hard shudder caught him.  He shook it off impatiently, and turned to the quivering figure still kneeling in the circle of his arm.

He gripped it suddenly close.  “That’s the sort of hell these fiendish tempers of yours might end in,” he said.  “You’ve got to save yourself, my son.  I can’t save you.”

Robin clung to him tensely, desperately.  “You don’t—­want me to go, Dicky?” he whispered.

“Good God!” Richard said.  “I’d rather see you dead!”

In the silence that followed, Robin turned with a curious groping movement, took the hand that pressed his shoulder, and pulled it over his eyes.

CHAPTER II

MIDSUMMER MADNESS

An ominous darkness brooded over all things as Green walked up the long avenue of Shale Court half-an-hour later.  The storm had been long in, gathering, and he judged that he would yet have time to reach his destination before it broke.  But it was nearer than he thought, and the first dull roar of its coming reached him soon after he had passed the gates.  He shrugged his shoulders at the sound and hurried on, for he was in no mood to turn back.  The business before him was one that could not be shirked, and the lines on his dark face showed unyielding determination as he went.

He was half-way up the drive when the first flash of lightning glimmered eerily across the heavy gloom.  It was followed so swiftly by a burst of thunder that he realized that he had no time to spare if he hoped to escape the threatening deluge.  He broke into a run, covering the ground with the ease of the practised athlete, elbows at sides and head up, going at an even pace which he knew he could maintain to the finish without distress.