“Those bulbs that I have planted under the windows of you,” raved Schmetz, “the demon hens of le docteur Geddes are with their paws upturning!  They upturn with rapidity and completeness, led by a shameless hog of a rooster.  Is it the orders of you that I devastate those fowls, Mademoiselle?”

Schmetz was furiously angry, and small wonder.  Those had been choice bulbs, some of which he had presented me from his own cherished store—­freesias, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and the starred narcissus, “such as Proserpine let fall, from Dis’s wagon.”

“Oh, our flowers!” wailed Alicia, springing to her feet; “and we counting on those bulbs for Christmas!”

I shut Freeman’s diary with a snap.  Hens were more immediate.

“Put it in the drawer of the library table,” called Alicia, running out with Schmetz at her heels.  “We’ll read it to-night.”

When I had done so, closing the door after me, I too ran outside, where some enormous black-and-white hens, led by the biggest rooster I had ever seen, were completing the utter destruction of our flower bed.

We charged down upon them, and they ran to and fro, after the stupid fashion of fowls.  Back and forth Alicia, Schmetz, and I chased those brutes; but Adam stood with folded hands, looking on from a safe and sane distance.  He refused to have anything to do with Geddes fowls in ol’ Mis’ Scarlett’s yard.  Just then the huge rooster ran into my skirts, all but upsetting me.  It was the work of a strenuous moment to seize him by the wings and so hold him.

Left to their own devices, the hens scuttled back to their own domain through a break in the palings on our side of the hedge, while in my hands the rooster squawked and plunged and kicked and struggled; it was like trying to hold a feathered hyena.

I was very angry.  I had lost my bulb bed.  I couldn’t wring the neck of the raider, much as I should have liked to do so, but with an arm made strong by a just and righteous rage I lifted that big brute high above my head and hurled him over into his own yard.  He sailed through the air like a black and white plane.

“Damn!  Oh, damn!” said somebody on the other side of the hedge.  There was a horrible grunt, as of one getting all the wind knocked out of him, a scuffle, and the squawks of the big rooster, to which the hens dutifully added a deafening chorus.

“The brute—­has just about—­murdered me!” grunted Doctor Richard Geddes.

We stood in stricken silence.  Swiftly, noiselessly, Uncle Adam faded from sight, putting a solid section of Hynds House between himself and what he felt was coming battle.  Uncle Adam had no wish to have to pray me to death, and he wasn’t going to run any risks with Doctor Richard Geddes.  Where that irascible gentleman was concerned, Uncle Adam, like Br’er Rabbit, would “trus’ no mistakes.”

A second later, red-faced, half-breathless, but with the light of battle in his eyes, Doctor Geddes appeared, mounted on a ladder on his side of the hedge.