it, Kirk
launched a sudden and violent kick, in the hope of its doing some
execution.

Kirk's boots were stout, and himself horrified and indignant; his heel
caught the stranger with full force in the temple, and the man, too,
was added to the prostrate figures in the darkening field. Two of them
did not long remain prostrate. Ken lurched, bewildered, to his feet, and
seeing his foe stretched by some miracle upon the ground, he bundled
Kirk over the wall and followed giddily. Stumbling down the shadowy
road, with Kirk's hand in his, he said:

"That was good luck. I must have given the gentleman a crack as he got
me."

"He was trying to steal your money, I think," Kirk said. "I was lying on
top of you, so I kicked him, hard."

"Oh, _that_ was it, was it?" Ken exclaimed. "Well, very neat work, even
if not sporting. By the way, excuse me for speaking to you the way I
did, but it wasn't any time to have a talk. You precious, trusting
little idiot, don't you know better than to go off with the first person
who comes along?"

"He said he'd take me home," Kirk said plaintively. "I told him where it
was."

"You've got to learn," said his brother, stalking grimly on in the dusk,
"that everybody in the world isn't so kind and honest as the people
you've met so far. That individual was going to take you goodness knows
where, and not let us have you back till we'd paid him all the money we
have in the world. If I hadn't come along just at that particular
moment, that's what would have happened."

Kirk sniffed, but Ken went on relentlessly:

"What were you doing outside the gate, anyway? You're not allowed
there. I don't like your going to the Maestro's, even, but at least it's
a safe path. There are automobiles on Winterbottom Road, and they
suppose that you can see 'em and get out of their way. I'm afraid we'll
have to say that you can't leave the house without Phil or me."

Ken was over-wrought, and forgot that his brother probably was, also.
Kirk wept passionately at last, and Ken, who could never bear to see his
tears, crouched penitent in the gloom of the road, to dry his eyes and
murmur tender apologies. At the gate of the farm, Ken paused suddenly,
and then said:

"Let's not say anything about all this to Phil; she'd just be worried
and upset. What do you say?"

"Don't let's," Kirk agreed. They shook hands solemnly, and then turned
to the lighted windows of Applegate Farm. But it would not have been so
easy t