than I can help; you may be sure of that."

With repeated injunctions to him not to leave the room, Clare went.

Before going quite, however, he must arrange for returning. To swarm
up between the two walls as he had done before, would be to bid
good-bye to his jacket at least, and he knew how appearances were
already against him. Spying about for whatever might serve his
purpose, he caught sight of an old garden-roller, and was making for
it, when Tommy, never doubting he was gone, came whistling round the
corner of the house with his hands in his pocket-holes, and an
impudent air of independence. Clare away, he was a lord in his own
eyes! He could kill the baby when he pleased! Plainly his mood was,
"He thinks I'm going to do as he tells me! Not if I knows it!" Clare
saw him before he saw Clare, and rushed at him with a roar.

"You thought I was gone!" he cried. "I told you not to leave the room!
Come along to the water-but!"

Tommy shivered when he heard him, and gave a shriek when he saw him
coming. He shook till his teeth chattered. But terror not always
paralyzes instinct in the wild animal. As Clare came running, he took
one step toward him, and dropped on the ground at his feet. Clare shot
away over his head, struck his own against a tree, and lay for a
minute stunned. Tommy's success was greater than he had hoped. He
scudded into the house, and closed and bolted the door to the kitchen.

When Clare came to himself, he found he had a cut on his head. It
would never do to go asking for work with a bloody face! The little
pool served at once for basin and mirror, and while he washed he