The policeman started.
'You know my daughter?'
'By sight only, I'm afraid. We were fellow-passengers on the
Lusitania. Unfortunately, I was in the second-cabin. I used to see
your daughter walking the deck sometimes.'
Molly smiled.
'I remember seeing you--sometimes.'
McEachern burst out.
'Then, you--!'
He stopped, and looked at Molly. The girl was bending over Rastus,
tickling him under the ear.
'Let me show you the way out, Mr. Pitt,' said the policeman,
shortly. His manner was abrupt, but when one is speaking to a man
whom one would dearly love to throw out of the window, abruptness is
almost unavoidable.
'Perhaps I should be going,' said Jimmy.
'Good-night, Mr. Pitt,' said Molly.
'I hope we shall meet again,' said Jimmy.
'This way, Mr. Pitt,' growled McEachern, holding the door.
'Please don't trouble,' said Jimmy. He went to the window, and,
flinging his leg over the sill, dropped noiselessly to the ground.
He turned and put his head in at the window again.
'I did that rather well,' he said, pleasantly. 'I think I must take
up this--sort of thing as a profession. Good-night.'
CHAPTER VIII
AT DREEVER
In the days before he began to expend his surplus energy in playing
Rugby football, the Welshman was accustomed, whenever the monotony
of his everyday life began to oppress him, to collect a few friends
and make raids across the border into England, to the huge
discomfort of the dwellers on the other side. It was to cope with
this habit that Dreever Castle, in the county of Shropshire, came
into existence. It met a long-felt want. In time of trouble, it
became a haven of refuge. From all sides, people poured into it,
emerging cautiously when the marauders had disappeared. In the whole
history of the castle, there is but one instance recorded of a
bandit attempting to take the place by storm, and the attack was an
emphatic failure. On receipt of a ladleful of molten lead, aimed to
a nicety by one John, the Chaplain (evidently one of those sporting
parsons), this warrior retired, done to a turn, to his mountain
fastnesses, and was never heard of again. He would seem, however, to
have passed the word around among his friends, for subsequent
raiding parties studiously avoided the castle, and a peasant who had
succeeded in crossing its threshold was for the future considered to
he 'home' and out of the game.
Such was the Dreever of old. In later days, the Welshman having
calmed down considerably, it had lost its militant character. The
old walls still stood, gray, menacing and unchanged, hut they were
the only link with the past. The castle was now a very comfortable
country-house, nominally ruled over by Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de
