At this sally there was a broad rustic laugh, which, however, Mr. Raby quelled with one glance of his eye.

“Come, don’t be impertinent,” said he to Little.

“Then don’t you provoke a fellow,” cried Henry, raising his voice.

Grace clasped her hands in dismay.

Jael Dence said, in her gravest and most mellow voice, “You do forget the good Squire saved your life this very night.”

This was like oil on all the waters.

“Well, certainly I oughtn’t to forget that,” said Henry, apologetically.  Then he appealed piteously to Jael, whose power over him struck every body directly, including Grace Carden.  “Look here, you mustn’t think, because I don’t keep howling, I’m all right.  My arm is disabled:  my back is almost broken:  my thigh is cut.  I’m in sharp pain, all this time:  and that makes a fellow impatient of being lectured on the back of it all.  Why doesn’t he let me go?  I don’t want to affront him now.  All I want is to go and get nursed a bit somewhere.”

“Now that is the first word of reason and common sense you have uttered, young man.  It decides me not to detain you.  All I shall do, under the circumstances, is to clear your rubbish out of that holy building, and watch it by night as well as day.  Your property, however, shall be collected, and delivered to you uninjured:  so oblige me with your name and address.”

Henry made no reply.

Raby turned his eye full upon him.

“Surely you do not object to tell me your name.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Excuse me.”

“What are you afraid of?  Do you doubt my word, when I tell you I shall not proceed against you?”

“No:  it is not that at all.  But this is no place for me to utter my father’s name.  We all have our secrets, sir.  You have got yours.  There’s a picture, with its face to the wall.  Suppose I was to ask you to tell all the world whose face it is you insult and hide from the world?”

Raby turned red with wrath and surprise, at this sudden thrust.  “You insolent young scoundrel!” he cried.  “What is that to you, and what connection can there be between that portrait and a man in your way of life?”

“There’s a close connection,” said Henry, trembling with anger, in his turn:  “and the proof is that, when that picture is turned to the light, I’ll tell you my name:  and, till that picture is turned to the light, I’ll not tell you my name; and if any body here knows my name, and tells it you, may that person’s tongue be blistered at the root!”

“Oh, how fearful!” cried Grace, turning very pale.  “But I’ll put an end to it all.  I’ve got the key, and I’ve his permission, and I’ll—­oh, Mr. Raby, there’s something more in this than we know.”  She darted to the picture, and unlocked the padlock, and, with Jael’s assistance, began to turn the picture.  Then Mr. Raby rose and seemed to bend his mind inward, but he neither forbade, nor encouraged, this impulsive act of Grace Carden’s.