as intensely dark where he sat beneath the thickly-leaved tree, and
all was quite still. But he felt sure that he had heard some one
approaching, and just as he had made up his mind to get further along,
Pan's voice reached him from the other side of the paling--

"Come on."

Hoping that he might have been mistaken, Syd changed his position, so
that he hung over the bough, and had just begun to edge along, when
there was a quick rustling behind him, and the breaking down of shrubs,
as if a man was forcing himself through, and the next minute he felt one
of his legs seized.

"My father!" thought Syd, and a cold chill of dread, shame, and misery
ran through him as he lay across the bough, silent and motionless, but
clinging to it with all his might.

"Got ye, have I, Pan-y-mar?" growled a husky voice. "Now then, let go,
and come and take it in your room, or I'll lay on here."

The first sound of that voice sent a warm glow through Syd, and thawed
his frozen faculties.

Exulting in the idea that it was only the old boatswain, he drew himself
all together as he held on with his arms to the bough, and then he
kicked out with all his might; the attack being so unexpected, that as
Barney received both feet in his chest, he loosened his hold, grasped
wildly at the air to save himself, and then came down in a sitting
position with sufficient force to evoke a groan; while by the time he
had recovered himself sufficiently to rise and get to the fence, he
could hear the rapid beat of steps in the distance.

"Why, there must be some one with him," growled Barney. "All right, my
boy, on'y wait a bit. You'll come crawling round the cottage 'fore
you're many hours older, and I'll lay that there rope's-end in the tub.
It'll make it lie closer and heavier round your back. Oh!"

He had taken a step to go back out of the shrubbery to the path, when an
acute pain ran up his spine, and made him limp along to the gardener's
cottage at the bottom of the grounds, grumbling to himself, and
realising that men of sixty can't fall so lightly as those who are forty
years younger.

"But never mind, I'll make him pay for the lot. He shan't play tricks
with me. Lor', I wish I was going to sea again, and had that boy under
me; I'd make him--Oh, murder! he's a'most broke my back."

CHAPTER FIVE.

As Syd kicked himself free of Barney's grasp he heard the heavy fall,
but he stopped for no more. A couple of vigorous sidewise movemen