Chapter VIII: Part 8

We thought of cocked hats, but they are warm to wear, and the big garden hats that make you look like pictures on the covers of plantation songs did beautifully. We put cockle-shells on them. Sandals we did try, with pieces of oil-cloth cut the shape of soles and fastened with tape, but the dust gets into your toes so, and we decided boots were better for such a long walk. Some of the pilgrims who were very earnest decided to tie their boots with white tape crossed outside to pretend sandals. Denny was one of these earnest palmers. As for dresses, there was no time to make them properly, and at first we thought of nightgowns; but we decided not to, in case people in Canterbury were not used to that sort of pilgrim nowadays. We made up our minds to go as we were--or as we might happen to be next day.

You will be ready to believe we hoped next day would be fine. It was.

Fair was the morn when the pilgrims arose and went down to breakfast. Albert's uncle had had brekker early and was hard at work in his study. We heard his quill-pen squeaking when we listened at the door. It is not wrong to listen at doors when there is only one person inside, because nobody would tell itself secrets aloud when it was alone.

We got lunch from the housekeeper, Mrs. Pettigrew. She seems almost to _like_ us all to go out and take our lunch with us. Though I should think it must be very dull for her all alone. I remember, though, that Eliza, our late general at Lewisham, was just the same. We took the dear dogs, of course. Since the Tower of Mystery happened we are not allowed to go anywhere without the escort of these faithful friends of man. We did not take Martha, because bull-dogs do not like long walks. Remember this if you ever have one of those valuable animals.

When we were all ready, with our big hats and cockle-shells, and our staves and our tape sandals, the pilgrims looked very nice.

"Only we haven't any scrips," Dora said.

"What is a scrip?"

"I think it's something to read. A roll of parchment or something."

So we had old newspapers rolled up, and carried them in our hands. We took the _Globe_ and the _Westminster Gazette_ because they are pink and green. The Dentist wore his white sand-shoes, sandalled with black tape, and bare legs. They really looked almost as good as bare feet.

"We _ought_ to have pease in our shoes," he said. But we did not think so. We knew what a very little stone in your boot will do, let alone pease.

Of course we knew the way to go to Canterbury, because the old Pilgrims' Road runs just above our house. It is a very pretty road, narrow, and often shady. It is nice for walking, but carts do not like it because it is rough and rutty; so there is grass growing in patches on it.

I have said that it was a fine day, which means that it was not raining, but the sun did not shine all the time.

"'Tis well, O Knight," said Alice, "that the orb of day shines not in undi--what's-its-name?--splendor."

"Thou sayest sooth, Plain Pilgrim," replied Oswald. "'Tis jolly warm even as it is."

"I wish I wasn't two people," Noel said, "it seems to make me hotter. I think I'll be a Reeve or something."

But we would not let him, and we explained that if he hadn't been so beastly particular Alice would have been half of him, and he had only himself to thank if being all of a Nun-Priest made him hot.

But it _was_ warm certainly, and it was some time since we'd gone so far in boots. Yet when H. O. complained we did our duty as pilgrims and made him shut up. He did as soon as Alice said that about whining and grizzling being below the dignity of a Manciple.

It was so warm that the Prioress and the wife of Bath gave up walking with their arms round each other in their usual silly way (Albert's uncle calls it Laura Matildaing), and the Doctor and Mr. Bath had to take their jackets off and carry them.

I am sure if an artist or a photographer, or any person who liked pilgrims, had seen us he would have been very pleased. The paper cockle-shells were first-rate, but it was awkward having them on the top of the staffs, because they got in your way when you wanted the staff to use as a walking-stick.

We stepped out like a man all of us, and kept it up as well as we could in book-talk, and at first all was merry as a dinner-bell; but presently Oswald, who was the "very perfect gentle knight," could not help noticing that one of us was growing very silent and rather pale, like people are when they have eaten something that disagrees with them before they are quite sure of the fell truth.

So he said, "What's up, Dentist, old man?" quite kindly and like a perfect knight, though, of course, he was annoyed with Denny. It is sickening when people turn pale in the middle of a game and everything is spoiled, and you have to go home, and tell the spoiler how sorry you are that he is knocked up, and pretend not to mind about the game being spoiled.

Denny said, "Nothing," but Oswald knew better.

Then Alice said, "Let's rest a bit, Oswald, it _is_ hot."

"Sir Oswald, if you please, Plain Pilgrim," returned her brother, dignifiedly. "Remember I'm a knight."

So then we sat down and had lunch, and Denny looked better. We played adverbs, and twenty questions, and apprenticing your son, for a bit in the shade, and then Dicky said it was time to set sail if we meant to make the port of Canterbury that night. Of course, pilgrims reck not of ports, but Dicky never does play the game thoughtfully.

We went on. I believe we should have got to Canterbury all right and quite early, only Denny got paler and paler, and presently Oswald saw, beyond any doubt, that he was beginning to walk lame.

"Shoes hurt you, Dentist?" he said, still with kind, striving cheerfulness.

"Not much--it's all right," returned the other.

So on we went--but we were all a bit tired now--and the sun was hotter and hotter; the clouds had gone away. We had to begin to sing to keep up our spirits. We sang "The British Grenadiers" and "John Brown's Body," which is grand to march to, and a lot of others. We were just starting on "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," when Denny stopped short. He stood first on one foot and then on the other, and suddenly screwed up his face and put his knuckles in his eyes and sat down on a heap of stones by the road-side.

When we pulled his hands down he was actually crying. The author does not wish to say it is babyish to cry.

"Whatever is up?" we all asked, and Daisy and Dora petted him to get him to say, but he only went on howling, and said it was nothing, only would we go on and leave him, and call for him as we came back.

Oswald thought very likely something had given Denny the stomach-ache, and he did not like to say so before all of us, so he sent the others away and told them to walk on a bit.

Then he said, "Now, Denny, don't be a young ass. What is it? _Is_ it stomach-ache?"

And Denny stopped crying to say "No!" as loud as he could.

"Well, then," Oswald said, "look here, you're spoiling the whole thing. Don't be a jackape, Denny. What is it?"

"You won't tell the others if I tell you?"

"Not if you say not," Oswald answered in kindly tones.

"Well, it's my shoes."

"Take them off, man."

"You won't laugh?"

"NO!" cried Oswald, so impatiently that the others looked back to see why he was shouting. He waved them away, and with humble gentleness began to undo the black tape sandals. Denny let him, crying hard all the time.

When Oswald had got off the first shoe the mystery was made plain to him.

"Well! Of all the--," he said in proper indignation.

Denny quailed--though he said he did not--but then he doesn't know what quailing is, and if Denny did not quail then Oswald does not know what quailing is either.

For when Oswald took the shoe off he naturally chucked it down and gave it a kick, and a lot of little pinky yellow things rolled out. And Oswald looked closer at the interesting sight. And the little things were _split pease_.

"Perhaps you'll tell me," said the gentle knight, with the politeness of despair, "why on earth you've played the goat like this?"

"Oh, don't be angry," Denny said; and now his shoes were off, he curled and uncurled his toes and stopped crying. "I _knew_ pilgrims put pease in their shoes--and--oh, I wish you wouldn't laugh!"

"I'm not," said Oswald, still with bitter politeness.

"I didn't want to tell you I was going to, because I wanted to be better than all of you, and I thought if you knew I was going to you'd want to too, and you wouldn't when I said it first. So I just put some pease in my pocket and dropped one or two at a time into my shoes when you weren't looking."

In his secret heart Oswald said, "Greedy young ass." For it _is_ greedy to want to have more of anything than other people, even goodness.

Outwardly Oswald said nothing.

"You see," Denny went on,--"I do want to be good. And if pilgriming is to do you good, you ought to do it properly. I shouldn't mind being hurt in my feet if it would make me good for ever and ever. And besides, I wanted to play the game thoroughly. You always say I don't."

The breast of the kind Oswald was touched by these last words.

"I think you're quite good enough," he said. "I'll fetch back the others--no, they won't laugh."

And we all went back to Denny, and the girls made a fuss with him. But Oswald and Dicky were grave and stood aloof. They were old enough to see that being good was all very well, but after all you had to get the boy home somehow.

When they said this, as agreeably as they could, Denny said:

"It's all right--some one will give me a lift."

"You think everything in the world can be put right with a lift," Dicky said, and he did not speak lovingly.

"So it can," said Denny, "when it's your feet. I shall easily get a lift home."

"Not here you won't," said Alice. "No one goes down this road; but the high-road's just round the corner, where you see the telegraph wires."

Dicky and Oswald made a sedan-chair and carried Denny to the high-road, and we sat down in a ditch to wait. For a long time nothing went by but a brewer's dray. We hailed it, of course, but the man was so sound asleep that our hails were vain, and none of us thought soon enough about springing like a flash to the horses' heads, though we all thought of it directly the dray was out of sight.

So we had to keep on sitting there by the dusty road, and more than one pilgrim was heard to say it wished we had never come. Oswald was not one of those who uttered this useless wish.

At last, just when despair was beginning to eat into the vital parts of even Oswald, there was a quick tap-tapping of horses' feet on the road, and a dog-cart came in sight with a lady in it all alone.

We hailed her like the desperate shipwrecked mariners in the long-boat hail the passing sail.

She pulled up. She was not a very old lady--twenty-five we found out afterwards her age was--and she looked jolly.

"Well," she said, "what's the matter?"

"It's this poor little boy," Dora said, pointing to the Dentist, who had gone to sleep in the dry ditch with his mouth open as usual. "His feet hurt him so, and will you give him a lift?"

"But why are you all rigged out like this?" asked the lady, looking at our cockle-shells and sandals and things.

We told her.

"And how has he hurt his feet?" she asked.

And we told her that.

She looked very kind. "Poor little chap," she said. "Where do you want to go?"

We told her that too. We had no concealments from this lady.

"Well," she said, "I have to go on to--what is its name?"

"Canterbury," said H. O.

"Well, yes, Canterbury," she said; "it's only about half a mile. I'll take the poor little pilgrim--and, yes, the three girls. You boys must walk. Then we'll have tea and see the sights, and I'll drive you home--at least some of you. How will that do?"

We thanked her very much indeed, and said it would do very nicely.

Then we helped Denny into the cart, and the girls got up, and the red wheels of the cart spun away through the dust.

"I wish it had been an omnibus the lady was driving," said H. O., "then we could all have had a ride."

"Don't you be so discontented," Dicky said.

And Noel said:

"You ought to be jolly thankful you haven't got to carry Denny all the way home on your back. You'd have had to if you'd been out alone with him."

When we got to Canterbury it was much smaller than we expected, and the cathedral not much bigger than the church that is next to the Moat House. There seemed to be only one big street, but we supposed the rest of the city was hidden away somewhere.

There was a large inn, with a green before it, and the red-wheeled dog-cart was standing in the stable-yard, and the lady, with Denny and the others, sitting on the benches in the porch looking out for us. The inn was called the "George and Dragon," and it made me think of the days when there were coaches and highwaymen and footpads and jolly landlords, and adventures at country inns like you read about.

"We've ordered tea," said the lady. "Would you like to wash your hands?" We saw that she wished us to, so we said yes, we would. The girls and Denny were already much cleaner than when we parted from them.

There was a court-yard to the inn and a wooden staircase outside the house. We were taken up this, and washed our hands in a big room with a fourpost wooden bed and dark red hangings--just the sort of hangings that would not show the stains of gore in the dear old adventurous times.

Then we had tea in a great big room with wooden chairs and tables, very polished and old.

It was very nice tea, with lettuces and cold meat and three kinds of jam, as well as cake, and new bread, which we are not allowed at home.

While tea was being had the lady talked to us. She was very kind. There are two sorts of people in the world, besides others: one sort understand what you're driving at and the other don't. This lady was the one sort.

After every one had had as much to eat as they could possibly want, the lady said, "What was it you particularly wanted to see at Canterbury?"

"The cathedral," Alice said, "and the place where Thomas a Becket was murdered."

"And the Danejohn," said Dicky.

Oswald wanted to see the walls, because he likes the story of St. Alphege and the Danes.

"Well, well," said the lady, and she put on her hat; it was a really sensible one--not a blob of fluffy stuff and feathers put on sideways and stuck on with long pins, and no shade to your face, but almost as big as ours, with a big brim and red flowers, and black strings to tie under your chin to keep it from blowing off.

Then we went out all together to see Canterbury. Dicky and Oswald took it in turns to carry Denny on their backs. The lady called him "The Wounded Comrade."

We went first to the church. Oswald, whose quick brain was easily aroused to suspicions, was afraid the lady might begin talking in the church, but she did not. The church door was open. I remember mother telling us once it was right and good for churches to be left open all day, so that tired people could go in and be quiet, and say their prayers if they wanted to. But it does not seem respectful to talk out loud in church. (_See_ Note A.)

When we got outside the lady said: "You can imagine how on the chancel steps began the mad struggle in which Becket, after hurling one of his assailants, armor and all, to the ground--"

"It would have been much cleverer," H. O. interrupted, "to hurl him without his armor, and leave that standing up."

"Go on," said Alice and Oswald, when they had given H. O. a withering glance. And the lady did go on. She told us all about Becket, and then about St. Alphege, who had bones thrown at him till he died, because he wouldn't tax his poor people to please the beastly rotten Danes.

And Denny recited a piece of poetry he knows called "The Ballad of Canterbury."

It begins about Danish war-ships, snake-shaped, and ends about doing as you'd be done by. It is long, but it has all the beef-bones in it, and all about St. Alphege.

Then the lady showed us the Danejohn, and it was like an oast-house. And Canterbury walls that Alphege defied the Danes from looked down on a quite common farmyard. The hospital was like a barn, and other things were like other things, but we went all about and enjoyed it very much. The lady was quite amusing, besides sometimes talking like a real cathedral guide I met afterwards. (_See_ Note B.) When at last we said we thought Canterbury was very small considering, the lady said:

"Well, it seemed a pity to come so far and not at least _hear_ something about Canterbury."

And then at once we knew the worst, and Alice said:

"What a horrid sell!"

But Oswald, with immediate courteousness, said:

"I don't care. You did it awfully well."

And he did not say, though he owns he thought of it:

"I knew it all the time," though it was a great temptation. Because really it was more than half true. He had felt from the first that this was too small for Canterbury. (_See_ Note C.)

The real name of the place was Hazelbridge, and not Canterbury at all. We went to Canterbury another time. (_See_ Note D.)

We were not angry with the lady for selling us about it being Canterbury, because she had really kept it up first-rate. And she asked us if we minded, very handsomely, and we said we liked it. But now we did not care how soon we got home. The lady saw this, and said:

"Come, our chariots are ready, and our horses caparisoned."

That is a first-rate word out of a book. It cheered Oswald up, and he liked her for using it, though he wondered why she said chariots. When we got back to the inn I saw her dog-cart was there, and a grocer's cart too, with B. Munn, grocer, Hazelbridge, on it. She took the girls in her cart, and the boys went with the grocer. His horse was a very good one to go, only you had to hit it with the wrong end of the whip. But the cart was very bumpety.

The evening dews were falling--at least, I suppose so, but you do not feel dew in a grocer's cart--when we reached home. We all thanked the lady very much, and said we hoped we should see her again some day. She said she hoped so.

The grocer drove off, and when we had all shaken hands with the lady and kissed her, according as we were boys or girls, or little boys, she touched up her horse and drove away.

She turned at the corner to wave to us, and just as we had done waving, and were turning into the house, Albert's uncle came into our midst like a whirling wind. He was in flannels, and his shirt had no stud in at the neck, and his hair was all rumpled up and his hands were inky, and we knew he had left off in the middle of a chapter by the wildness of his eye.

"Who was that lady?" he said. "Where did you meet her?"

Mindful, as ever, of what he was told, Oswald began to tell the story from the beginning.

"The other day, protector of the poor," he began, "Dora and I were reading about the Canterbury pilgrims--"

Oswald thought Albert's uncle would be pleased to find his instructions about beginning at the beginning had borne fruit, but instead he interrupted.

"Stow it, you young duffer! Where did you meet her?"

Oswald answered briefly, in wounded accents, "Hazelbridge."

Then Albert's uncle rushed up-stairs three at a time, and as he went he called out to Oswald:

"Get out my bike, old man, and blow up the back tire."

I am sure Oswald was as quick as any one could have been, but long ere the tire was thoroughly blowed Albert's uncle appeared, with a collar-stud and tie and blazer, and his hair tidy, and wrenched the unoffending machine from Oswald's surprised fingers.

Albert's uncle finished pumping up the tire, and then, flinging himself into the saddle, he set off, scorching down the road at a pace not surpassed by any highwayman, however black and high-mettled his steed.

We were left looking at each other.

"He must have recognized her," Dicky said.

"Perhaps," Noel said, "she is the old nurse who alone knows the dark secret of his high-born birth."

"Not old enough, by chalks," Oswald said.

"I shouldn't wonder," said Alice, "if she holds the secret of the will that will make him rolling in long-lost wealth."

"I wonder if he'll catch her," Noel said. "I'm quite certain all his future depends on it. Perhaps she's his long-lost sister, and the estate was left to them equally, only she couldn't be found, so it couldn't be shared up."

"Perhaps he's only in love with her," Dora said; "parted by cruel fate at an early age, he has ranged the wide world ever since trying to find her."

"I hope to goodness he hasn't--anyway, he's not ranged since we knew him--never farther than Hastings," Oswald said. "We don't want any of that rot."

"What rot?" Daisy asked. And Oswald said:

"Getting married, and all that sort of rubbish."

And Daisy and Dora were the only ones that didn't agree with him. Even Alice owned that being bridesmaids must be fairly good fun. It's no good. You may treat girls as well as you like, and give them every comfort and luxury, and play fair just as if they were boys, but there is something unmanly about the best of girls. They go silly, like milk goes sour, without any warning.

When Albert's uncle returned he was very hot, with a beaded brow, but pale as the Dentist when the pease were at their worst.

"Did you catch her?" H. O. asked.

Albert's uncle's brow looked black as the cloud the thunder will presently break from.

"No," he said.

"Is she your long-lost nurse?" H. O. went on, before we could stop him.

"Long-lost grandmother! I knew the lady long ago in India," said Albert's uncle, as he left the room, slamming the door in a way we should be forbidden to.

And that was the end of the Canterbury Pilgrimage.

As for the lady, we did not then know whether she was his long-lost grandmother that he had known in India or not, though we thought she seemed youngish for the part. We found out afterwards whether she was or not, but that comes in another part. His manner was not the one that makes you go on asking questions.

The Canterbury Pilgriming did not exactly make us good, but then, as Dora said, we had not done anything wrong that day. So we were twenty-four hours to the good.

* * * * *

_Note A._--Afterwards we went and saw real Canterbury. It is very large. A disagreeable man showed us round the cathedral, and jawed all the time quite loud as if it wasn't a church. I remember one thing he said. It was this:

"This is the Dean's Chapel; it was the Lady Chapel in the wicked days when people used to worship the Virgin Mary."

And H. O. said, "I suppose they worship the Dean now?"

Some strange people who were there laughed out loud. I think this is worse in church than not taking your cap off when you come in, as H. O. forgot to do, because the cathedral was so big he didn't think it was a church.

_Note B._ (_See_ Note C.)

_Note C._ (_See_ Note D.)

_Note D._ (_See_ Note E.)

_Note E._ (_See_ Note A.)

This ends the Canterbury Pilgrims.

THE DRAGON'S TEETH; OR ARMY-SEED

Albert's uncle was out on his bicycle as usual. After the day when we became Canterbury Pilgrims and were brought home in the dog-cart with red wheels by the lady he told us was his long-lost grandmother he had known years ago in India, he spent not nearly so much of his time in writing, and he used to shave every morning instead of only when requisite, as in earlier days. And he was always going out on his bicycle in his new Norfolk suit. We are not so unobserving as grown-up people make out. We knew well enough he was looking for the long-lost. And we jolly well wished he might find her. Oswald, always full of sympathy with misfortune, however undeserved, had himself tried several times to find the lady. So had the others. But all this is what they call a digression; it has nothing to do with the dragon's teeth I am now narrating.

It began with the pig dying--it was the one we had for the circus, but it having behaved so badly that day had nothing to do with its illness and death, though the girls said they felt remorse, and perhaps if we hadn't made it run so that day it might have been spared to us. But Oswald cannot pretend that people were right just because they happen to be dead, and as long as that pig was alive we all knew well enough that it was it that made us run--and not us it.

The pig was buried in the kitchen garden. Bill, that we made the tombstone for, dug the grave, and while he was away at his dinner we took a turn at digging, because we like to be useful, and besides, when you dig you never know what you may turn up. I knew a man once that found a gold ring on the point of his fork when he was digging potatoes, and you know how we found two half-crowns ourselves once when we were digging for treasure.

Oswald was taking his turn with the spade, and the others were sitting on the gravel and telling him how to do it.

"Work with a will," Dicky said, yawning.

Alice said: "I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without finding something. I think I'd rather it was a secret passage than anything."

Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.

"A secret's nothing when you've found it out. Look at the secret staircase. It's no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its squeaking. I'd rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we were little." It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old very quickly after you have once passed the prime of your youth, which is at ten, I believe.

"How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?" Noel asked, with his mouth full of plum.

"If they were really dead it wouldn't matter," Dora said. "What I'm afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when you're going up-stairs to bed."

"Skeletons can't walk," Alice said in a hurry; "you know they can't, Dora."

And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones, or else they cry when it comes to bedtime, and say it was because of what you said.

"We sha'n't find anything. No jolly fear," said Dicky.

And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard, and it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful space that we had found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-color, but like a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said:

"It _is_ the skeleton."

The girls all drew back, and Alice said, "Oswald, I wish you wouldn't."

A moment later the discovery was unearthed, and Oswald lifted it up with both hands.

"It's a dragon's head," Noel said, and it certainly looked like it. It was long and narrowish and bony, and with great yellow teeth sticking in the jaw.

Bill came back just then and said it was a horse's head, but H. O. and Noel would not believe it, and Oswald owns that no horse he has ever seen had a head at all that shape.

But Oswald did not stop to argue, because he saw a keeper who showed me how to set snares going by, and he wanted to talk to him about ferrets, so he went off, and Dicky and Denny and Alice with him. Also Daisy and Dora went off to finish reading _Ministering Children_. So H. O. and Noel were left with the bony head. They took it away.

The incident had quite faded from the mind of Oswald next day. But just before breakfast Noel and H. O. came in, looking hot and anxious. They had got up early and had not washed at all--not even their hands and faces. Noel made Oswald a secret signal. All the others saw it, and with proper delicate feeling pretended not to have.

When Oswald had gone out with Noel and H. O., in obedience to the secret signal, Noel said:

"You know that dragon's head yesterday?"

"Well?" Oswald said, quickly, but not crossly--the two things are quite different.

"Well, you know what happened in Greek history when some chap sowed dragon's teeth?"

"They came up armed men," said H. O.; but Noel sternly bade him shut up, and Oswald said "Well," again. If he spoke impatiently it was because he smelled the bacon being taken in to breakfast.

"Well," Noel went on, "what do you suppose would have come up if we'd sowed those dragon's teeth we found yesterday?"

"Why, nothing, you young duffer," said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. "All that isn't History--it's Humbug. Come on in to brekker."

"It's _not_ humbug," H. O. cried, "it _is_ history. We _did_ sow--"

"Shut up," said Noel again. "Look here, Oswald. We did sow those dragon's teeth in Randall's ten-acre meadow, and what do you think has come up?"

"Toadstools, I should think," was Oswald's contemptible rejoinder.

"They have come up a camp of soldiers," said Noel--"_armed men_. So you see it _was_ history. We have sowed army-seed, just like Cadmus, and it has come up. It was a very wet night. I dare say that helped it along."

Oswald could not decide which to disbelieve--his brother or his ears. So disguising his doubtful emotions without a word, he led the way to the bacon and the banqueting hall.

He said nothing about the army-seed then, neither did Noel and H. O. But after the bacon we went into the garden, and then the good elder brother said:

"Why don't you tell the others your cock-and-bull story?"

So they did, and their story was received with warm expressions of doubt. It was Dicky who observed:

"Let's go and have a squint at Randall's ten-acre, anyhow. I saw a hare there the other day."

We went. It is some little way, and as we went disbelief reigned superb in every breast except Noel's and H. O.'s, so you will see that even the ready pen of the present author cannot be expected to describe to you his variable sensations when he got to the top of the hill and suddenly saw that his little brothers had spoken the truth. I do not mean that they generally tell lies, but people make mistakes sometimes and the effect is the same as lies if you believe them.

There _was_ a camp there with real tents and soldiers in gray and red tunics. I dare say the girls would have said coats. We stood in ambush, too astonished even to think of lying in it, though of course we know that this is customary. The ambush was the wood on top of the little hill, between Randall's ten-acre meadow and Sugden's Waste Wake pasture.

"There would be cover here for a couple of regiments," whispered Oswald, who was, I think, gifted by Fate with the far-seeingness of a born general.

Alice merely said "Hist," and we went down to mingle with the troops as though by accident, and seek for information.

The first man we came to at the edge of the camp was cleaning a sort of cauldron thing like witches brew bats in.

We went up to him and said, "Who are you? Are you English, or are you the enemy?"

"We're the enemy," he said, and he did not seem ashamed of being what he was. And he spoke English with quite a good accent for a foreigner.

"The enemy!" Oswald echoed, in shocked tones. It is a terrible thing to a loyal and patriotic youth to see an enemy cleaning a pot in an English field, with English sand, and looking as much at home as if he was in his foreign fastnesses.

The enemy seemed to read Oswald's thoughts with deadly unerringness. He said:

"The English are somewhere over on the other side of the hill. They are trying to keep us out of Maidstone."

After this our plan of mingling with the troops did not seem worth going on with. This soldier, in spite of his unerringness in reading Oswald's inmost heart, seemed not so very sharp in other things, or he would never have given away his secret plans like this, for he must have known from our accents that we were Britons to the backbone. Or perhaps (Oswald thought this, and it made his blood at once boil and freeze, which our uncle had told us was possible, but only in India), perhaps he thought that Maidstone was already as good as taken and it didn't matter what he said. While Oswald was debating within his intellect what to say next, and how to say it so as to discover as many as possible of the enemy's dark secrets, Noel said:

"How did you get here? You weren't here yesterday at tea-time."

The soldier gave the pot another sandy rub, and said:

"I dare say it does seem quick work--the camp seems as if it had sprung up in the night, doesn't it?--like a mushroom."

Alice and Oswald looked at each other, and then at the rest of us. The words "_sprung up in the night_" seemed to touch a string in every heart.

"You see," whispered Noel, "he won't tell us how he came here. _Now_, is it humbug or history?"

Oswald, after whisperedly requesting his young brother to dry up and not bother, remarked:

"Then you're an invading army?"

"Well," said the soldier, "we're a skeleton battalion, as a matter of fact, but we're invading all right enough."

And now indeed the blood of the stupidest of us froze, just as the quick-witted Oswald's had done earlier in the interview. Even H. O. opened his mouth and went the color of mottled soap; he is so fat that this is the nearest he can go to turning pale.

Denny said, "But you don't look like skeletons."

The soldier stared, then he laughed and said: "Ah, that's the padding in our tunics. You should see us in the gray dawn taking our morning bath in a bucket."

It was a dreadful picture for the imagination. A skeleton, with its bones all loose most likely, bathing anyhow in a pail. There was a silence while we thought it over.

Now, ever since the cleaning-cauldron soldier had said that about taking Maidstone, Alice had kept on pulling at Oswald's jacket behind, and he had kept on not taking any notice. But now he could not stand it any longer, so he said, "Well, what is it?"

Alice drew him aside, or rather, she pulled at his jacket so that he nearly fell over backwards, and then she whispered, "Come along, don't stay parleying with the foe. He's only talking to you to gain time."

"What for?" said Oswald.

"Why, so that we shouldn't warn the other army, you silly," Alice said, and Oswald was so upset by what she said that he forgot to be properly angry with her for the wrong word she used.

"But we ought to warn them at home," she said; "suppose the Moat House was burned down, and all the supplies commandeered for the foe?"

Alice turned boldly to the soldier. "_Do_ you burn down farms?" she asked.

"Well, not as a rule," he said, and he had the cheek to wink at Oswald, but Oswald would not look at him. "We've not burned a farm since--oh, not for years."

"A farm in Greek history it was, I expect," Denny murmured.

"Civilized warriors do not burn farms nowadays," Alice said, sternly, "whatever they did in Greek times. You ought to know that."

The soldier said things had changed a good deal since Greek times. So we said good-morning as quickly as we could: it is proper to be polite even to your enemy, except just at the moments when it has really come to rifles and bayonets or other weapons.

The soldier said, "So long!" in quite a modern voice, and we retraced our footsteps in silence to the ambush--I mean the wood. Oswald did think of lying in the ambush then, but it was rather wet, because of the rain the night before, that H. O. said had brought the army-seed up. And Alice walked very fast, saying nothing but "Hurry up, can't you!" and dragging H. O. by one hand and Noel by the other. So we got into the road.

Then Alice faced round and said, "This is all our fault. If we hadn't sowed those dragon's teeth there wouldn't have been any invading army."

I am sorry to say Daisy said, "Never mind, Alice, dear. _We_ didn't sow the nasty things, did we, Dora?"

But Denny told her it was just the same. It was _we_ had done it, so long as it was any of us, especially if it got any of us into trouble. Oswald was very pleased to see that the Dentist was beginning to understand the meaning of true manliness, and about the honor of the house of Bastable, though of course he is only a Foulkes. Yet it is something to know he does his best to learn.

If you are very grown-up, or very clever, I dare say you will now have thought of a great many things. If you have you need not say anything, especially if you're reading this aloud to anybody. It's no good putting in what you think in this part, because none of us thought anything of the kind at the time.

We simply stood in the road without any of your clever thoughts, filled with shame and distress to think of what might happen owing to the dragon's teeth being sown. It was a lesson to us never to sow seed without being quite sure what sort it is. This is particularly true of the penny packets, which sometimes do not come up at all, quite unlike dragon's teeth.

Of course H. O. and Noel were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was only fair.

"How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?" Dicky said. "Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies of dead English soldiers, I shouldn't wonder."

"If they're the old Greek kind of dragon's-teeth soldiers they ought to fight each other to death," Noel said; "at least, if we had a helmet to throw among them."

But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be no use for H. O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to.

Denny said, suddenly:

"Couldn't we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn't know the way to Maidstone?"

Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown. He said:

"Fetch all the tools out of your chest--Dicky go too, there's a good chap, and don't let him cut his legs with the saw." He did once, tumbling over it. "Meet us at the cross-roads, you know, where we had the Benevolent Bar. Courage and despatch, and look sharp about it."

When they had gone we hastened to the cross-roads, and there a great idea occurred to Oswald. He used the forces at his command so ably that in a very short time the board in the field which says "No thoroughfare. Trespassers will be prosecuted" was set up in the middle of the road to Maidstone. We put stones, from a heap by the road, behind it to make it stand up.

Then Dicky and Denny came back, and Dicky shinned up the sign-post and sawed off the two arms, and we nailed them up wrong, so that it said "To Maidstone" on the Dover Road, and "To Dover" on the road to Maidstone. We decided to leave the Trespassers board on the real Maidstone road, as an extra guard.

Then we settled to start at once to warn Maidstone.

Some of us did not want the girls to go, but it would have been unkind to say so. However, there was at least one breast that felt a pang of joy when Dora and Daisy gave out that they would rather stay where they were and tell anybody who came by which was the real road.

"Because it would be so dreadful if some one was going to buy pigs or fetch a doctor or anything in a hurry and then found they had got to Dover instead of where they wanted to go to," Dora said. But when it came to dinner-time they went home, so that they were entirely out of it. This often happens to them by some strange fatalism.

We left Martha to take care of the two girls, and Lady and Pincher went with us. It was getting late in the day, but I am bound to remember no one said anything about their dinners, whatever they may have thought. We cannot always help our thoughts. We happened to know it was roast rabbits and currant jelly that day.

We walked two and two, and sang the "British Grenadiers" and "Soldiers of the Queen" so as to be as much part of the British army as possible. The Cauldron-Man had said the English were the other side of the hill. But we could not see any scarlet anywhere, though we looked for it as carefully as if we had been fierce bulls.

But suddenly we went round a turn in the road and came plump into a lot of soldiers. Only they were not red-coats. They were dressed in gray and silver. And it was a sort of furzy-common place, and three roads branching out. The men were lying about, with some of their belts undone, smoking pipes and cigarettes.

"It's not British soldiers," Alice said. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, I'm afraid it's more enemy. You didn't sow the army-seed anywhere else, did you, H. O., dear?"

H. O. was positive he hadn't. "But perhaps lots more came up where we did sow them," he said; "they're all over England by now, very likely. _I_ don't know how many men can grow out of one dragon's tooth."

Then Noel said, "It was my doing, anyhow, and I'm not afraid," and he walked straight up to the nearest soldier, who was cleaning his pipe with a piece of grass, and said:

"Please, are you the enemy?" The man said:

"No, young commander-in-chief, we're the English."

Then Oswald took command.

"Where is the general?" he said.

"We're out of generals just now, field-marshal," the man said, and his voice was a gentleman's voice. "Not a single one in stock. We might suit you in majors now--and captains are quite cheap. Competent corporals going for a song. And we have a very nice colonel, too--quiet to ride or drive."

Oswald does not mind chaff at proper times. But this was not one.

"You seem to be taking it very easy," he said, with disdainful expression.

"This _is_ an easy," said the gray soldier, sucking at his pipe to see if it would draw.

"I suppose _you_ don't care if the enemy gets into Maidstone or not!" exclaimed Oswald, bitterly. "If I were a soldier I'd rather die than be beaten."

The soldier saluted. "Good old patriotic sentiment," he said, smiling at the heartfelt boy. But Oswald could bear no more.

"Which is the colonel?" he asked.

"Over there--near the gray horse."

"The one lighting a cigarette?" H. O. asked.

"Yes--but I say, kiddie, he won't stand any jaw. There's not an ounce of vice about him, but he's peppery. He might kick out. You'd better bunk."

"Better what?" asked H. O.

"Bunk, bottle, scoot, skip, vanish, exit," said the soldier.

"That's what you'd do when the fighting begins," said H. O. He is often rude like that--but it was what we all thought, all the same. The soldier only laughed.

A spirited but hasty altercation among ourselves in whispers ended in our allowing Alice to be the one to speak to the colonel. It was she who wanted to. "However peppery he is he won't kick a girl," she said, and perhaps this was true.

But of course we all went with her. So there were six of us to stand in front of the colonel. And as we went along we agreed that we would salute him on the word three. So when we got near, Dick said, "One, two, three," and we all saluted very well--except H. O., who chose that minute to trip over a rifle a soldier had left lying about, and was only saved from falling by a man in a cocked hat who caught him deftly by the back of his jacket and stood him up on his legs.

"Let go, can't you," said H. O. "Are you the general?"

Before the Cocked Hat had time to frame a reply, Alice spoke to the colonel. I knew what she meant to say, because she had told me as we threaded our way among the resting soldiery. What she really said was:

"Oh, how _can_ you!"

"How can I _what_?" said the colonel, rather crossly.

"Why, _smoke_?" said Alice.

"My good children, if you're an infant Band of Hope, let me recommend you to play in some other back yard," said the Cocked-Hatted Man.

H. O. said, "Band of Hope yourself"--but no one noticed it.

"We're _not_ a Band of Hope," said Noel. "We're British, and the man over there told us you are. And Maidstone's in danger, and the enemy not a mile off, and you stand _smoking_." Noel was standing crying, himself, or something very like it.

"It's quite true," Alice said.

The colonel said, "Fiddle de dee."

But the Cocked-Hatted Man said, "What was the enemy like?"

We told him exactly. And even the colonel then owned there might be something in it.

"Can you show me the place where they are on the map?" he asked.

"Not on the map, we can't," said Dicky; "at least, I don't think so, but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an hour."

The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the colonel, who returned his scrutiny; then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, we've got to do something," he said, as if to himself. "Lead on, Macduff!"

The colonel roused his soldiery from their stupor of pipes by words of command which the present author is sorry he can't remember.

Then he bade us boys lead the way. I tell you it felt fine, marching at the head of a regiment. Alice got a lift on the Cocked-Hatted One's horse. It was a red-roan steed of might, exactly as if it had been in a ballad. They call a gray-roan a "blue" in South Africa, the Cocked-Hatted One said.

We led the British army by unfrequented lanes till we got to the gate of Sugden's Waste Wake pasture. Then the colonel called a whispered halt, and choosing two of us to guide him, the dauntless and discerning commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are reconnoitring, or anxious to escape detection for whatever reason.

Our Colonel's orderly crackled most. If you're not near enough to tell a colonel by the crown and stars on his shoulder-strap, you can tell him by the orderly behind him, like "follow my leader."

"Look out!" said Oswald in a low but commanding whisper, "the camp's down in that field. You can see if you take a squint through this gap."

The speaker took a squint himself as he spoke, and drew back, baffled beyond the power of speech. While he was struggling with his baffledness the British Colonel had his squint. He also drew back, and said a word that he must have known was not right--at least when he was a boy.

"I don't care," said Oswald, "they were there this morning. White tents like mushrooms, and an enemy cleaning a caldron."

"With sand," said Dicky.

"That's most convincing," said the Colonel, and I did not like the way he said it.

"I say," Oswald said, "let's get to the top corner of the ambush--the wood, I mean. You can see the cross-roads from there."

We did, and quickly, for the crackling of branches no longer dismayed our almost despairing spirits.

We came to the edge of the wood, and Oswald's patriotic heart really did give a jump, and he cried, "There they are, on the Dover Road."

Our miscellaneous sign-board had done its work.

"By Jove, young un, you're right! And in quarter column, too! We've got 'em on toast--on toast, egad!"

I never heard any one not in a book say "egad" before, so I saw something really out of the way was indeed up.

The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he said he must rejoin the main body at once. We found the main body Very friendly with Noel and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life. "I think he's a general in disguise," Noel said. "He's been giving us chocolate out of a pocket in his saddle." Oswald thought about the roast rabbit then--and he is not ashamed to own it--yet he did not say a word. But Alice is really not a bad sort. She had saved two bars of chocolate for him and Dicky. Even in war girls can sometimes be useful in their humble way.