As for the lady, she curled her lip.  “Mr. Riddle, don’t be foolish,” she said.  “If we are to play, send your horse to the stables.”  Suddenly her eye lighted on me.  “One more brat,” she sighed.  “Nick, take him to the nursery, or the stable.  And both of you keep out of my sight.”

Nick strode up to me.

“Don’t mind her.  She’s always saying, ‘Keep out of my sight.’” His voice trembled.  He took me by the sleeve and began pulling me around the house and into a little summer bower that stood there; for he had a masterful manner.

“What’s your name?” he demanded.

“David Trimble,” I said.

“Have you seen my father in town?”

The intense earnestness of the question surprised an answer out of me.

“Yes.”

“Where?” he demanded.

“In his house.  My father left me with your father.”

“Tell me about it.”

I related as much as I dared, leaving out Mr. Temple’s double dealing; which, in truth, I did not understand.  But the boy was relentless.

“Why,” said he, “my father was a friend of Mr. Lowndes and Mr. Mathews.  I have seen them here drinking with him.  And in town.  And he ran away?”

“I do not know where he went,” said I, which was the truth.

He said nothing, but hid his face in his arms over the rail of the bower.  At length he looked up at me fiercely.

“If you ever tell this, I will kill you,” he cried.  “Do you hear?”

That made me angry.

“Yes, I hear,” I said.  “But I am not afraid of you.”

He was at me in an instant, knocking me to the floor, so that the breath went out of me, and was pounding me vigorously ere I recovered from the shock and astonishment of it and began to defend myself.  He was taller than I, and wiry, but not so rugged.  Yet there was a look about him that was far beyond his strength.  A look that meant, never say die.  Curiously, even as I fought desperately I compared him with that other lad I had known, Andy Jackson.  And this one, though not so powerful, frightened me the more in his relentlessness.

Perhaps we should have been fighting still had not some one pulled us apart, and when my vision cleared I saw Nick, struggling and kicking, held tightly in the hands of the clergyman.  And it was all that gentleman could do to hold him.  I am sure it was quite five minutes before he forced the lad, exhausted, on to the seat.  And then there was a defiance about his nostrils that showed he was undefeated.  The clergyman, still holding him with one hand, took out his handkerchief with the other and wiped his brow.

I expected a scolding and a sermon.  To my amazement the clergyman said quietly:—­

“Now what was the trouble, David?”

“I’ll not be the one to tell it, sir,” I said, and trembled at my temerity.

The parson looked at me queerly.

“Then you are in the right of it,” he said.  “It is as I thought; I’ll not expect Nicholas to tell me.”