rabbits at the lodge.  After their departure, their brothers became infinitely more obstreperous.  Whether it were that Conrade had some slight amount of consideration for the limbs of his lesser followers, or whether the fact were—­what Rachel did not remotely imagine—­that he was less utterly unmanageable with her sister than with herself, certain it is that the brothers went into still more intolerable places, and treated their guardian as ducklings treat an old hen.  At last they quite disappeared from the view round a projecting point of rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—­Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail of stones, water-smoothed brick-bats, cockle-shells, fishes’ backbones, and other unsavoury missiles.  Abstractedly, Rachel had her theory that young gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours, and become used to all ranks; but when it came to witnessing an actual skirmish when she was responsible for Fanny’s sons, it was needful to interfere, and in equal dismay and indignation she came round the point.  The light artillery fled at her aspect, and she had to catch Francis’s arm in the act of discharging after them a cuttlefish’s white spine, with a sharp “For shame, they are running away!  Conrade, Zack, have done!” Zack was one of her own scholars, and held her in respect.

He desisted at once, and with a touch of his rough forelock, looked sheepish, and said, “Please ma’am, he was meddling with our lobster-pot.”

“I wasn’t doing any harm,” said Conrade.  “I was just looking in, and they all came and shied stones at us.”

“I don’t care how the quarrel began,” said Rachel.  “You would not have run into it if you had been behaving properly.  Zack was quite right to protect his father’s property, but he might have been more civil.  Now shake hands, and have done with it.”

“Not shake hands with a low boy,” growled Francis.  But happily Conrade was of a freer spirit, and in spite of Rachel’s interference, had sense enough to know himself in the wrong.  He held out his hand, and when the ceremony had been gone through, put his hands in his pockets, produced a shilling, and said, “There, that’s in case I did the thing any harm.”  Rachel would have preferred Zachary’s being above its acceptance, but he was not, and she was thankful that a wood path offend itself, leading through the Homestead plantations away from the temptations and perils of the shore.