As I approached, the sound of voices smote my ears.

I stopped.  I could hear Beale speaking.  Then came the rich notes of Vickers, the butcher.  Then Beale again.  Then Dawlish the grocer.  Then a chorus.

The storm had burst, and in my absence.

I blushed for myself.  I was in command, and I had deserted the fort in time of need.  What must the faithful Hired Man be thinking of me?  Probably he placed me, as he had placed Ukridge, in the ragged ranks of those who have Shot the Moon.

Fortunately, having just come from the professor’s I was in the costume which of all my wardrobe was most calculated to impress.  To a casual observer I should probably suggest wealth and respectability.  I stopped for a moment to cool myself, for, as is my habit when pleased with life, I had been walking fast; then opened the gate and strode in, trying to look as opulent as possible.

It was an animated scene that met my eyes.  In the middle of the lawn stood the devoted Beale, a little more flushed than I had seen him hitherto, parleying with a burly and excited young man without a coat.  Grouped round the pair were some dozen men, young, middle-aged, and old, all talking their hardest.  I could distinguish nothing of what they were saying.  I noticed that Beale’s left cheekbone was a little discoloured, and there was a hard, dogged expression on his face.  He, too, was in his shirt-sleeves.

My entry created no sensation.  Nobody, apparently, had heard the latch click, and nobody had caught sight of me.  Their eyes were fixed on the young man and Beale.  I stood at the gate, and watched them.

There seemed to have been trouble already.  Looking more closely, I perceived sitting on the grass apart a second young man.  His face was obscured by a dirty pocket handkerchief, with which he dabbed tenderly at his features.  Every now and then the shirt-sleeved young man flung his hand towards him with an indignant gesture, talking hard the while.  It did not need a preternaturally keen observer to deduce what had happened.  Beale must have fallen out with the young man who was sitting on the grass and smitten him; and now his friend had taken up the quarrel.

“Now this,” I said to myself, “is rather interesting.  Here, in this one farm, we have the only three known methods of dealing with duns.  Beale is evidently an exponent of the violent method.  Ukridge is an apostle of Evasion.  I shall try Conciliation.  I wonder which of us will be the most successful.”

Meanwhile, not to spoil Beale’s efforts by allowing him too little scope for experiment, I refrained from making my presence known, and continued to stand by the gate, an interested spectator.

Things were evidently moving now.  The young man’s gestures became more vigorous.  The dogged look on Beale’s face deepened.  The comments of the Ring increased in point and pungency.

“What did you hit him for, then?”