Suddenly a funnel of light flared into the darkness, intensifying it, waking into vivid green a full-foliaged holly; a rain of blows echoed back and forth through the night, a whirr of bewildered wings mingled with it, a frantic piping that was drowned in the clamour even as it burst forth.  High overhead the startled wood-pigeons flew out into the free air above the tree-tops, their clamour filling the whole place with the beating of wings that in the dark seemed mighty as the wings of avenging angels, but availed their tiny brethren nothing.  In that one minute there fell, beaten into the undergrowth to die miserably or flailed into the greedy hands and caps of the murderers, some half a hundred innocent and lovely lives, all of them torn out in an agony of fear without knowing why.  Ishmael ran forward, not even hearing his own voice as it shouted oaths he never knew he had used.

The men stopped at their work, caps and sticks in hand, staring stupidly; only Archelaus, after a first moment’s pause, showed no astonishment.  It was not till long afterwards that it occurred to Ishmael to wonder whether his brother had all along known he followed, and it was a question that was to remain for ever unanswered.  Archelaus lifted his lantern, which first gleamed on the red surprise of John-Willy Jacka’s face, then on the foolish mask of Silly Peter, the local idiot, who stood slackly agape between a couple of miners.  Then Archelaus brought the light round, to fall on Ishmael’s pale face ere swinging it on to Killigrew.

“Lads, here’s the young gentlemen from the Manor!” he cried—­“come to see a bit o’ bush-beaten; let’s show ’en, shall us?” And, still holding his lantern so that its light fell on them, he deliberately let drive with his great stick at a branch where a wounded bird was crushed upon a sharp twig.

Ishmael sprang forward and laid hands on the stick, twisting at it with all his strength.  Archelaus gave for a flash under the sudden onslaught, but, recovering himself at once, held the stick steady with one hand against all the twisting of Ishmael’s two.  He laughed a little as he did so.  Silly Peter, under the impression that it was all part of the fun, laughed too.

“You beast!... you beast!...”  Ishmael was saying as he tussled.  Killigrew caught at his arm.

“Say something to them, Ishmael; say something to them.  Don’t go on like that ...” he muttered urgently.

Ishmael turned on him a face distorted with passion.  “Say something—­what is there to say to brutes like that?  Ah!...”

Archelaus had thrown the lantern underfoot and trampled it out; a darkness impenetrable to dazzled eyes enwrapped them.  Killigrew, keeping his head amidst the scuffing he heard, dived for where he had seen young Jacka standing in guilty stillness, his dark lantern dangling from his hand.  Almost at once Killigrew felt his own fingers meet its smooth, slightly hot surface; he wrenched it away and fumbled desperately