difficulty of any reply.

"Sometimes I half reckon a memory of that blessed boy still makes you
glum, my dear. Is it so? Haven't you forgot him yet?"

As he spoke an explosion, differing much in sound from those which
continued to startle the night, rang suddenly out of the distance. It
arose from a spot on the confines of the orchard, and was sharp in
tone--sharp almost as the human cries which followed it. Then the
distant lights hastened towards the theatre of the catastrophe. "What
has happened?" cried Phoebe, thankful enough to snatch conversation away
from herself and her affairs.

"Easy to guess. That broken report means a burst gun. One of those old
fools has got excited, put too much powder into his blunderbuss and
blown his head off, likely as not. No loss either!"

"Please, please go and see! Oh, if 'tis Billy Blee come to grief,
faither will be lost. Do 'e run, Mr. Grimbal--Jan, I mean. If any grave
matter's failed out, send them bwoys off red-hot for doctor."

"Stop here, then. If any ugly thing has happened, there need be no
occasion for you to see it."

He departed hastily to where a distant galaxy of fiery eyes twinkled and
tangled and moved this way and that, like the dying sparks on a piece of
burnt paper.

Then the patient grey shadow, rewarded by chance at last, found his
opportunity, slipped into the hedge just above Grimbal's sweetheart, and