As the shadows lengthened it grew quiet and almost cool under the arbour. The girls had the house to themselves, it appeared, Mr. and Mrs. Cran having been called away that morning to the bedside of a grandmother who had been suddenly taken sick somewhere upstate. "Real accommodating of the old lady to develop stomach trouble the day before the game," Bunty commented to the sisters, who responded with shrieks of appreciation. "Not the first time either," he continued, winking at his admiring audience, and the sisters shrieked afresh. The redhaired one was the current type of brazen minx—but the younger, 'Smeralda, with her smouldering eyes and her heavy beauty of chin and throat—ah, the younger, for his undoing, reminded Vance of Floss Delaney. She had the same sultry pallor, the same dark penthouse of hair… .

Presently some other girls turned up, and there were more drinks and more jokes about Mr. and Mrs. Cran being away. "Guess some of us fellows ought to stay and act watchdog for you two kiddies," Bunty humorously suggested. "Ain't you scared nights, all alone in this great big house?" A general laugh hailed this, for the Cran homestead was of the most modest proportions. But it stood apart in the fields, with a little wood behind it and the girls had to admit that it was lonesome at night, particularly since somebody'd poisoned the dog… . More laughs, and a burlesque confession from Bunty that he'd poisoned the dog for his own dark ends, which evoked still shriller cries of amusement… . Bunty always found something witty and unexpected to say… .

There was a young moon, and it glinted through the dusk of the bean leaves and silvered their edges as darkness fell. Bunty and Cuty, and the other girls and fellows, wandered off down into the wood. Vance meant to follow, but he was very tired and sleepy, and a little befuddled with alcohol, and his broken-down rocking chair held him like a cradle.

"You're dead beat aren't you?" he heard one of the girls say, and felt a soft hand push back his hair. He opened his eyes and 'Smeralda's were burning into his.

"Come right upstairs, and you can lay down on Mother's bed," she continued persuasively.

He remembered saying: "Where's Upton?" with a last clutch at his vanishing sense of responsibility, and she answered: "Oh, he's down in the woods with Cuty and the others," and pulled Vance to his feet. He followed her upstairs through the darkening house, and at the top of the landing she slid a burning palm in his… .