The lad was down the steps and through the hedge in a trice--happily with the garden shears still in hand.

As he came crashing through the gorse bushes, he says he was half minded to turn back, fearing he had to deal with a lunatic, but the possession of the shears reassured him.

"I could 'ave jabbed his eyes," he explained, "anyhow." Directly Mr.Carrington caught sight of him, his demeanour became at once that of a sane but desperate man.

He struggled to his feet, stumbled, stood up, and came to meet the boy.
"Look!" he cried, "I can't get 'em off!" And with a qualm of horror the boy saw that, attached to Mr.
Carrington's cheek, to his bare arm, and to his thigh, and lashing furiously with their lithe brown muscular bodies, were three of these horrible larvae, their great jaws buried deep in his flesh and sucking for dear life.

They had the grip of bulldogs, and Mr.Carrington's efforts to detach the monsters from his face had only served to lacerate the flesh to which it had attached itself, and streak face and neck and coat with living scarlet.
"I'll cut 'im," cried the boy; "'old on, Sir." And with the zest of his age in such proceedings, he severed one by one the heads from the bodies of Mr.Carrington's assailants.