that it was right to his hand if he came
out, set her own bicycle against another of the pillars, but out of
sight lest he should take it by mistake, walked up the steps, hammered
the knocker firmly, and rang the bell. The moment the door opened she
stepped quickly past the footman into the hall. The keeper sat on a
chair facing her, and on a chair beside him sat Wiggins looking white
and woebegone.

Erebus gazed at them with angry sparkling eyes, then she said sharply:
"What are you doing with my little brother?"

She adopted Wiggins with this suddenness in order to strengthen her
position.

The keeper opened his eyes in some surprise at her uncompromising tone,
but he said triumphantly:

"I caught 'im poachin'--"

"Stand up! What do you mean by speaking to me sitting down?" cried
Erebus in her most imperative tone.

The keeper stood up with uncommon quickness and a sudden sheepish air:
"'E was poachin'," he said sulkily.

"He was not! A little boy like that!" cried Erebus scornfully.

"Anyways, 'e was aidin' an' abettin', an' I've brought 'im to Mr.
D'Arcy Rosynimer an' it's for 'im to say," said the keeper stubbornly.

There came a faint click from the beautiful lips of Erebus, the gentle
click by which the Twins called each other to attention. At the sound
Wiggins, his face faintly flushed with hope, braced himself. Erebus
measured the distance with the eye of an expert, just as there came
into the farther end of the hall that large, flabby, pudding-faced
young Pomeranian Briton, Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer.

"Where's the boacher?" he roared in an eager, angry voice, reverting in
his emotion to the ancestral "b."

As the keeper turned to him Erebus sprang to the door and threw it wide.

"Bolt, Wiggins!" she cried.

Wiggins bolted for the door; the keeper grabbed at him and missed; the
footman grabbed, and grabbed the interposing Erebus. She slammed the
door behind the vanished Wiggins.

Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer dashed heavily down the hall with a thick howl.
Erebus set her back against the door. He caught her by the left arm to
sling her out of the way. It was a silly arm to choose, for she caught
him a slap on his truly Pomeranian expanse of cheek with the full swing
of her right, a slap that rang through the great hall like the crack of
a whip-lash. Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer was large but tender. He howled
again, and thumped at Erebus with big flabby fists. She caught the
first blow on an uncom