By the time the Latin was finished he was boiling over with impatience to commit some reckless enormity which should at once "pay uncle out"for the spoiled half-holiday and restore himself to his proper place in his own estima­tion and in that of Billy Greggs. He wiped his inky fingers on his aunt's clean table­cover, thrust them into his black thatch of hair, and racked his brains for a plan.

In the next room the Vicar was at work upon his sermon for Sunday morning. He wrote more fluently than was usual with him, and the blunt corners of his mouth were compressed into their most characteristic line. The sermon was to be a thunderbolt in Porthcarrick, a stern denunciation of Farmer Roscoe's daughter and her unknown, seducer. The girl herself and her proud, helpless old father would probably be pres­ent, for the Roscoes were regular attendants at church; but Mr. Raymond was not sensi­tive. He had no sympathy with what he called "her crime"; in his youth he had known something of temptation, but not of such temptation as Maggie Roscoe would have understood.

***

"Hi! Bill!"

Billy Greggs was poking up a fat snail with a stick; he turned round at the shout and saw Jack Raymond racing down the heather slope towards him.

"Done your Latin?"

Jack threw himself full length on the heather.

"Yes, at last."

Billy returned to the snail. For some little time Jack lay royally at ease, kicking his heels in the air like the uncouth young Philistine he was: then he sat up, pulled a knife out of his pocket, opened it with a broken and dirty finger nail and began whit­tling a stick to a cheerful accompaniment of "Tommy, make room for your uncle..."