or Bigwigs! All right! We'll go. And now, bed; and think of nothing!"

Her whisper tickled his ear:

"You are a darling to me, Dad!"

He went out comforted.

And for some time after she had forgotten everything he leaned out of
his window, smoking cigarettes, and trying to see the body and soul of
night. How quiet she was--night, with her mystery, bereft of moon, in
whose darkness seemed to vibrate still the song of the cuckoos that had
been calling so all day! And whisperings of leaves communed with Felix.

CHAPTER XXI

What Tod thought of all this was, perhaps, as much of an enigma to Tod
as to his three brothers, and never more so than on that Sunday morning
when two police constables appeared at his door with a warrant for the
arrest of Tryst. After regarding them fixedly for full thirty seconds,
he said, "Wait!" and left them in the doorway.

Kirsteen was washing breakfast things which had a leadless glaze, and
Tryst's three children, extremely tidy, stood motionless at the edge of
the little scullery, watching.

When she had joined him in the kitchen Tod shut the door.

"Two policemen," he said, "want Tryst. Are they to have him?"

In the life together of these two there had, from the very start, been
a queer understanding as to who should decide what. It had become by now
so much a matter of instinct that combative consultations, which bulk so
large in married lives, had no place in theirs. A frowning tremor passed
over her face.

"I suppose they must. Derek is out. Leave it to me, Tod, and take the
tinies into the orchard."

Tod took the three little Trysts to the very spot where Derek and Nedda
had gazed over the darkening fields in exchanging that first kiss, and,
sitting on the stump of the apple-tree he had cut down, he presented
each of them with an apple. While they ate, he stared. And his dog
stared at him. How far there worked in Tod the feelings of an ordinary
man watching three small children whose only parent the law was just
taking into its charge it would be rash to say, but his eyes were
extremely blue and there was a frown between them.

"Well, Biddy?" he said at last.

Biddy did not reply; the habit of being a mother had imposed on her,
together with the gravity of her little, pale, oval face, a peculiar
talent for silence. But the round-cheeked Susie said:

"Billy can eat cores."

After this statement, silence was broken only by munching, till Tod
remarked:

"What makes