small human monkey were swollen with weeping; his nose was bleeding,
and in size and shape scarce recognizable as a nose. At the sight, the
consciousness of his protectorate awoke in Clare, and he stopped,
unable to speak, but not unable to listen. Tommy blubbered out a
confused, half-inarticulate something about "granny and the other
devil," who between them had all but killed him.

"What can I do?" said Clare, his heart sinking with the sense of
having no help in him.

Tommy was ready to answer the question. He had been hatching vengeance
all the way. Eagerly came his proposition--that they should, in their
turn, lie in ambush for Simpson, and knock his crutch from under
him. That done, Clare should belabour him with it, while he ran like
the wind and set his grandmother's house on fire.

"She'll be drunk in bed, an' she'll be burned to death!" cried
Tommy. "Then we'll mizzle!"

"But it would hurt them both very badly, Tommy!" said Clare, as if
unfolding the reality of the thing to a foolish child.

"Well! all right! the worse the better! 'Ain't they hurt us?" rejoined
Tommy.

"That's how we know it's not nice!" answered Clare. "If they set it a
going, we ain't to keep it a going!"

"Then they'll be at it for ever," cried Tommy, "an' I'm sick of it!
I'll _kill_ granny! I swear I will, if I'm hanged for it! She's said a