He looked wildly round, and there was Martha in the doorway, and to his utter horror she was talking to his father, who was in the passage just beyond.

“Row’s Embrocation, or arnica,” the Captain was saying.  “It is probably in this pantry, my good girl, because it is the last place I should expect it to be in.  I left it on my bedroom mantelpiece, but somebody has seen fit to meddle with it.  Why in the name of all that is mysterious can’t you let my things alone?”

“And for what should I be after moving it for?” Martha retorted.  “I don’t mix the pastry with it to make it lightsome, leastway not ordinarily.”

She tossed her head, and the action revealed the small, kneeling, terrified figure at the window.  Now the door was only half open, and her master was standing just beside it outside, so she only had the benefit of the spectacle.

Twice she opened her mouth to speak, but Bunty made such frantic, imploring faces at her than she closed it again, and even began to examine the bottles on the shelf near the door to give the boy an opportunity of retreat.

One minute and he would, have been safe—­one minute and he would have been in the thick of the cactus, that had quite lost its terrors.

But the Fates were too strong for him.  And all because Martha Tomlinson’s shoe was don at the heel.  In turning round it twisted a little under her, and, in trying to recover her balance, she put out one hand.  And in putting out one hand she knocked over a jug.  And the jug communicated its shock to dish.  Which toppled over, and coolly pushed the great basin of milk off the shelf on to the floor.  I don’t know if ever you have tried to clean a board floor after milk, but I am sure you can imagine it would be a disagreeable task, especially if you had scrubbed it well only that morning.  It was hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that Martha, in her profound irritation at the disaster, turned angrily round, and, pointing to the figure now stuck in the window, demanded in an exasperated tone whether the blessed saints could stand that dratted boy any longer, for she couldn’t, so there.

The Captain took an angry step into the pantry and gave a roar of command for Bunty to come down.

The boy dropped in an agony of dread and shrinking.

“Always his hands a-pickin’ and stealin’ and his tongue a-lyin’,” said Martha Tomlinson, gazing unkindly at the unhappy child.

Two, three, four, five angry cuts from the riding-whip in the Captain’s hands, and Bunty had ducked under his arm and fled howling down the passage and out of the back door.

Away across the paddocks he went, sobbing at every step, but hugely commending himself for bearing all this for someone else’s sake.

He could hardly have believed, had anyone told him previously, that he could have done anything so absolutely noble, and the thought comforted him even while the cuts and scratches smarted.  He tried to stifle his sobs as he reached the shed, and even stuffed half a handful of currants into his mouth towards that end.