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138 "Tim! do you hear this?" asked Admonition.

"He will send for his cousin to live in the house with him, and to support him against you."

"Oh, oh! That's fine, isn't it, Tim?"

"If they come, your reign is at an end. That girl, Glory, has a head of iron and the heart of a lion. No one can stand against her but one. There is only one in all the world has dared to conquer her, and he will do it yet. Don't you think you will be able to lift a little finger against her will. She will be too strong for you and a hundred of your Timothys."

Admonition laughed. "My little mannikin daren't do it. He is under my thumb."

"The flag is flying," sneered Elijah.

At that moment the faint light of evening broke through the clouds and Admonition saw the Union Jack at the mast-head.

"He is right. There is audacity! Run, Tim, haul it down, and bring it me. It shall go into the kitchen fire to boil the water for a glass of grog."

CHAPTER XIV

ON THE BURNT HILL

was Christmas Eve. A hard frost had set in. The leaves which had hung on the thorn trees on the Ray rained off and were whirled away by the wind and scattered over the rising and falling waters in the Rhyn. On the saltings were many pools, filled from below, through crab burrows, from the channels; when the tide mounted, the water squirted up through these passages and brimmed the pools, and when the tide fell, it was sucked down through them as if running out of a colander. Now a thin film of ice was formed about the edges of these pondlets, and the marsh herbs that dipped in them were encased in crystal. The wild geese and ducks came in multitudes, and dappled the water of Mersea channel.

"There's four gone," said Abraham Dowsing in a sulky voice to Mehalah.

"Four what?"