“Let me go!” muttered Landon—­“You’re killing me!”

“Serve you right!” answered Clifford—­“You scoundrel!  My uncle shall know of this!”

“Tell him what you like!” retorted Landon, faintly—­“I don’t care!  Get off my chest!—­you’re suffocating me!”

Clifford slightly relaxed the pressure of his hands and knees.

“Will you apologise?” he demanded.

“Apologise?—­for what?”

“For your insolence to me and my cousin.”

“Cousin be hanged!” snarled Landon—­“She’s no more your cousin than I am—­she’s only a nameless bastard!  I heard her tell you so!  And fine airs she gives herself on nothing!”

“You miserable spy!” and Clifford again held him down as in a vise—­“Whatever you heard is none of your business!  Will you apologise?”

“Oh, I’ll apologise, if you like!—­anything to get your weight off me!”—­and Landon made an abortive effort to rise.  “But I keep my own opinion all the same!”

Slowly Robin released him, and watched him as he picked himself up, with an air of mingled scorn and pity.  Landon laughed forcedly, passing one hand across his forehead and staring in a dazed fashion at the shadows cast on the ground by the moon.

“Yes—­I keep my own opinion!” he repeated, stupidly.  “You’ve got the better of me just now—­but you won’t always, my pert Cock Robin!  You won’t always.  Don’t you think it!  Briar Farm and I may part company—­but there’s a bigger place than Briar Farm—­there’s the world!—­that’s a wide field and plenty of crops growing on it!  And the men that sow those kind of crops and reap them and bring them in, are better farmers than you’ll ever be!  As for your girl!”—­here his face darkened and he shook his fist towards the lattice window behind which slept the unconscious cause of the quarrel—­“You can keep her!  A nice ‘Innocent’ she is!—­talking with a man in her bedroom after midnight!—­why, I wouldn’t have her as a gift—­not now!”

Choking with rage, Clifford sprang towards him again—­Landon stepped back.

“Hands off!” he said—­“Don’t touch me!  I’m in a killing mood!  I’ve a knife on me—­you haven’t.  You’re the master—­I’m the man—­and I’ll play fair!  I’ve my future to think of, and I don’t want to start with a murder!”

With this, he turned his back and strode off, walking somewhat unsteadily like a blind man feeling his way.

Clifford stood for a moment, inert.  The angry blood burned in his face,—­his hands were involuntarily clenched,—­he was impatient with himself for having, as he thought, let Landon off too easily.  He saw at once the possibility of mischief brewing, and hastily considered how it could best be circumvented.

“The simplest way out of it is to make a clean breast of everything,” he decided, at last.  “Tomorrow I’ll see Uncle Hugo early in the morning and tell him just what has happened.”