"and I guess I'm going to see."

Whereupon Liosha, who was as strong as a young horse, sprang to
death-grapple with the postman, a puny little man, pitched him onto the
side of the road and calmly entered into felonious possession of His
Majesty's mails. Then finding no letter she cast the whole delivery over
the supine and gasping postman and marched contemptuously into the
house.

The most astonishing part of the business was that in these outbreaks of
barbarity she did not seem to be impelled by blind rage. Most people who
heave a postman about a peaceful county would do so in a fit of passion,
through loss of nerve-control. Not so Liosha. She did these things with
the bland and deadly air of an inexorable Fate.

The perspiration still beads on my brow when I think of the cajoling and
bribing and blustering and lying I had to practise in order to hush up
the matter. As for Liosha, both Jaffery and I rated her soundly. I
explained loftily that not so many years ago, transportation, lifelong
imprisonment, death were the penalties for the felony which she had
committed.

[Illustration: Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, handled the cleek.]

"You ought to have a jolly good thrashing," roared Jaffery.

At this Liosha, who had endured our abuse with the downcast eyes of
angelic meekness, took a golfclub from a bag lying on the hall table and
handed it to the red-bearded giant.

"I guess I do," she said. "Beat me."

And, as I am a living man, I swear that if Jaffery had taken her at her
word and laid on lustily she would have taken her thrashing without a
murmur. What was one to do with such a woman?

Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, fingered the cleek. Gradually she
raised her glorious eyes to him, and in them I was startled to see the
most extraordinary doglike submission. He frowned portentously and shook
his head. Her lips worked, and after a convulsive sob or two, she threw
herself on the ground, clasped his knees, and to our dismay burst into a
passion of weeping. Barbara, rushing into the hall at this juncture,
like a fairy tornado, released us from our embarrassing position. She
annihilated us with a sweeping glance of scorn.

"Oh, go away, both of you, go away!"

So we went away and left her to deal with Liosha.

Save for such little excursions and alarms the days passed very
pleasantly. Jaffery spent most of the sweltering hours of daylight (it
was a blazing summer) in playing golf on the local c