f
one who has abandoned hope. Later he came out of it with his roving
black eye full of tears of genuine feeling; his scraped chin was
smarting cruelly and unattractive in patches--red patches. At the door
the breathless, excited and triumphant maid of the inn accosted him
with the news that she had just found his keys and his shaving-brush
under the mattress of his bed. He looked round the village of Little
Deeping blankly; it suddenly seemed to him a squalid place.

None the less it was a comforting thought that he would not be put to
the expense of having his portmanteau broken open and fitted with a new
lock, for his great wealth had never weakened the essential thriftiness
of his soul. Half an hour later, in changed tweeds but with unchanged
chin, he took his way to Colet House, thinking with great unkindness of
his future stepson. As he drew near it he saw that that stepson was
awaiting him at the garden gate; nearer still he saw that he was
awaiting him with an air of ineffable serenity.

The Terror politely opened the gate for him, and with a kind smile
asked him if he had slept well.

The red blood of the Basters boiled in the captain's veins, and he said
somewhat thickly: "Look here, my lad, I don't want any more of your
tricks! You play another on me, and I'll give you the soundest
licking you ever had in your life!"

The serenity on the Terror's face broke up into an expression of the
deepest pain: "Whatever's the matter?" he said in a tone of amazement.
"I thought you loved a joke. You said you did--yesterday--at tea."

"You try it on again!" said Captain Baster.

"Now, whatever has put your back up?" said the Terror in a tone of even
greater amazement. "Was it the apple-pie bed, or the lost keys, or the
water in the boot, or the clothes-line across the road?"

It was well that the Terror could spring with a cat's swiftness:
Captain Baster's boot missed him by a hair's breadth.

The Terror ran round the house, in at the back door and up to the
bedroom of Erebus.

"Waxy?" he cried joyously. "He's black in the face! I told him he
said he loved a joke."

Erebus only growled deep down in her throat. She was bitterly
aggrieved that she had not had a hand in Captain Baster's downfall the
night before. The Terror had awakened her to tell her joyfully of his
glorious exploit and of the shuddering welkin.

He paid no heed to the rumbling of her discontent; he said: "Now, you
quite understa