are you to thrust yourself into what doesn’t concern you?” he said.
“I am a lawyer,” said Appleby quietly. “Don’t come any nearer!”
Davidson dropped the gun into the palm of his left hand with a rattle. “I might have known it by your tricks,” he said. “Well, I’ll make you fight, and we’ll see who Miss Wayne will believe to-morrow. Now take yourself and your money to—— out of this!”
He raised the gun, and Appleby’s calmness deserted him. With a sweep of the riding crop he struck the barrel aside, and, perhaps without Davidson intending it, there was a flash and an explosion. Then the riding crop came down upon a dim white face. The man reeled, recovered, and lurched forward, while next moment he and his adversary were panting and straining in a breathless grapple. Davidson was a strong man, but the blow had dazed him, and the refreshment consumed at the “Black Bull” had endued him with an unreasoning passion, which was not an advantage in a conflict with a man who kept his head. Appleby was also wiry, and tolerably proficient in a certain useful art. Thus when he got his fist home in a place where it would hurt Davidson slackened his grasp, and Appleby struck again as he flung him off. He staggered backwards and went down heavily. Appleby stood still until he rose shakily to his feet again.
“Go home,” he said. “You will be sorry for this tomorrow. It will probably cost you twenty pounds.”
Davidson turned without a word, and Appleby waited a minute or two watching him cross the meadow towards the narrow, one-railed footbridge that spanned the river. He was walking unevenly, but Appleby was too shaken himself to trouble about his condition. Perhaps keeper Davidson was still dazed by the blows dealt him, or his brain was clouded by impotent anger, for he passed on, a dim, shadowy figure, into the gloom of a coppice, and no man saw him alive again. Then Appleby went back to the hall and let himself in through the conservatory. He found Tony waiting him in a state of feverish anxiety, told him briefly what had passed, and, assuring him that Davidson would in all probability listen to reason next day, went to sleep. He also slept soundly, and awakened later than usual when Tony’s man, who had found knocking useless, entered the room with some of his garments on his arm.
“Mr. Palliser was asking if you were up, sir, and they’re getting breakfast now,” he said, and then glanced at the clothes. “I’ve been giving them a brush. There was some mud on the trousers, and I notice a seam split in the coat. I could ask one of the maids to put a stitch in it before it gets worse.”
“No,” said Appleby, a trifle too hastily. “You can put them in my bag. I am leaving by the night train.”
He got into his tweeds, and went down to find the rest of the men who had finished breakfast lounging about the hall, while Tony and his uncle stood on the terrace outside. A dog-cart was also waiting, and another vehicle coming up the avenue. Appleby commenced his breakfast, wondering—because he surmised that Miss Wayne would be anxious to hear what he had accomplished—whether any of the ladies would come down before the shooters started. By and by he saw a light dress flit across the gallery at the head of the stairway, and immediately got up with the ostensible purpose of going back to his room. He, however, stopped in the corridor which led out of the gallery, where, as he had expected, Violet Wayne was waiting him. She usually appeared to as much advantage in the morning as she did under the glitter of the lamps at night, but Appleby fancied that she had not slept very well. There was, so far as he could see, nobody else about.
“You have something to tell me?” she said quietly.
“No,” said Appleby. “I fancied I should have had, but instead I have ten pounds to give you back.”
“Then some plan you had has failed?”
“Not exactly! I am going to try a bolder course.”
The girl looked at him steadily. “I have trusted you, Mr. Appleby. Would it be too much if I asked you to take me into your confidence?”
Appleby shook his head. “I am afraid I can’t very well do that just now,” he said. “In the meanwhile you can be kind to Tony. He has been foolish—and a trifle weak—but he has done nothing that you could not readily forgive him.”
There was a faint sparkle in Violet Wayne’s eyes, and a suspicion of color in her cheek. “How do you know that my code is as lenient as your own—and are you wise in asking me to take so much on trust?”
Appleby smiled gravely. “I think I grasp your meaning, but if you try to follow up any clue I may have given you it can only lead you into a pitfall. Please wait, and I think I can engage that Tony will tell you the whole story. It would come best from himself, but he must substantiate it, and that is what I expect I can enable him to do.”
The color grew a trifle plainer in Violet Wayne’s cheek, and Appleby, who guessed her thoughts, shook his head.
“There is a question you are too proud to ask, but I will venture to answer it,” he said. “I have known Tony a long while, and he has never wavered in his allegiance to you. To doubt that would be an injustice you have too much sense to do yourself. Now you have the simple truth, and if it is a trangression to tell it you, you must remember that I have had no training in conventional niceties.”
The girl looked at him with a curious little glow in her eyes. “Tony has the gift of making good friends,” she said. “One could have faith in you.”
She turned and left him, while Appleby, who went down, found Godfrey Palliser talking to the under-keeper on the terrace. He was a spare, gray-haired gentleman, formal and fastidious, and betrayed his impatience only by a faint incisiveness of speech.
“Davidson has kept us waiting half an hour, it has never happened before, and it shall not occur again,” he said. “You have been round to the lodge, Evans?”
“Yes, sir,” said the man. “They had not seen him since last night. He told them he was going to the fir spinny. Some of the Darsley men had been laying snares for hares.”
“It shall be looked into, but we will make a start now as you have sent the beaters on,” said Palliser, who turned to his guests. “I am sorry we have kept you waiting, gentlemen.”
They started, and, as it happened, Tony and Appleby sat at the back of the dog-cart which followed the larger vehicle, while the rattle of gravel beneath the wheels rendered their conversation inaudible to those who sat in front.
“You heard what Evans said?” asked Tony anxiously.
“Of course!” said Appleby. “I am almost afraid Davidson has made a bolt. If he hadn’t he would have come for the twenty pounds.”
“I hope so,” and Tony drew in a deep breath. “It would be a merciful relief to feel I had seen the last of him. Why in the name of all that’s wonderful are you afraid he has gone?”
“Because I wanted a statement and your letter from him,” said Appleby. “You see, you will have to tell Miss Wayne that story sooner or later.”
“Tell her!” said Tony blankly. “I’ll be shot if I do!”
“Then she’ll find out, and it will be considerably the worse for you.”
Now, Tony Palliser was a good-natured man, and had as yet never done anything actually dishonorable, but whenever it was possible he avoided a difficulty, which, because difficulties must now and then be grappled with, not infrequently involved him in a worse one. He lived for the present only, and was thereby sowing a crop of trouble which he would surely have to reap in the future.
“I don’t think it’s likely, and there is no reason why I should make unpleasantness—it wouldn’t be kind,” he said.
“You don’t know Violet yet. She is almost unmercifully particular, and now and then makes one feel very small and mean. It would hurt her horribly to know I’d been mixed up in the affair at all—and, the fact is, I don’t feel equal to telling her anything of that kind. Besides, I did kiss the girl, you see—and I don’t think Violet would understand what prompted me.”