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The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith

by S. R. Crockett · English · Gutenberg #39340 · 394,236 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith

Author: S. R. Crockett

Illustrator: Gordon Browne


        
Release date: April 1, 2012 [eBook #39340]
                Most recently updated: March 6, 2015

Language: English

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        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF SIR TOADY LION WITH THOSE OF GENERAL NAPOLEON SMITH ***




Produced by David Edwards, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









    Sir Toady Lion


    [Illustration: "AS THE HIGHLANDERS HAD CLUNG TO THE CAVALRY
    STIRRUPS AT BALACLAVA."]


     THE SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF SIR TOADY LION
         WITH THOSE OF GENERAL NAPOLEON SMITH
              AN IMPROVING HISTORY FOR
      OLD BOYS, YOUNG BOYS, GOOD BOYS, BAD BOYS,
    BIG BOYS, LITTLE BOYS, COW BOYS, AND TOM-BOYS

                       BY

                S. R. CROCKETT

    AUTHOR of "SWEETHEART TRAVELLERS", "THE RAIDERS", &c.

    ILLUSTRATED BY GORDON BROWNE
    NEW YORK
    FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY


    Copyright, 1897
    by
    Frederick A. Stokes
    Company


    [Illustration: TOO GOOD BOYS NOT ALLOWED TO READ THIS BOOK
    BY ORDER FIELD MARSHAL NAPOLEON SMITH]




    CONTENTS


          I. PRISSY, HUGH JOHN, AND SIR TOADY LION,
         II. THE GOSPEL OF DASHT-MEAN,
        III. HOW HUGH JOHN BECAME GENERAL NAPOLEON,
         IV. CASTLE PERILOUS,
          V. THE DECLARATION OF WAR,
         VI. FIRST BLOOD,
        VII. THE POOR WOUNDED HUSSAR,
       VIII. THE FAMILIAR SPIRIT,
         IX. PUT TO THE QUESTION,
          X. A SCOUTING ADVENTURE,
         XI. ENEMY'S COUNTRY,
        XII. MOBILISATION,
       XIII. THE ARMY OF WINDY STANDARD,
        XIV. THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK SHEDS,
         XV. TOADY LION PLAYS A FIRST LONE HAND,
        XVI. THE SMOUTCHY BOYS,
       XVII. BEFORE THE INQUISITION,
      XVIII. THE CASTLE DUNGEON,
        XIX. THE DROP OF WATER,
         XX. THE SECRET PASSAGE,
        XXI. THE RETURN FROM THE BASTILE,
       XXII. MUTINY IN THE CAMP,
      XXIII. CISSY CARTER, BOYS' GIRL,
       XXIV. CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME--AND ENDS THERE,
        XXV. LOVE'S (VERY) YOUNG DREAM,
       XXVI. AN IMPERIAL BIRTHDAY,
      XXVII. THE BANTAM CHICKENS,
     XXVIII. THE GIPSY CAMP,
       XXIX. TOADY LION'S LITTLE WAYS,
        XXX. SAINT PRISSY, PEACEMAKER,
       XXXI. PRISSY'S PICNIC,
      XXXII. PLAN OF CAMPAIGN,
     XXXIII. TOADY LION'S SECOND LONE HAND,
      XXXIV. THE CROWNING MERCY,
       XXXV. PRISSY'S COMPROMISE,
      XXXVI. HUGH JOHN'S WAY-GOING,
     XXXVII. THE GOOD CONDUCT PRIZE,
    XXXVIII. HUGH JOHN'S BLIGHTED HEART,
      XXXIX. "GIRLS ARE FUNNY THINGS,"




    ILLUSTRATIONS


    "AS THE HIGHLANDERS HAD CLUNG TO THE CAVALRY STIRRUPS AT BALACLAVA,"
    SIR TOADY LION,
    HUGH JOHN HAD A SISTER,
    THE HIGHWAY LIES DESERTED,
    MR. DICK TURPIN, LATE OF YORK AND TYBURN,
    HE STOOD ON THE ROADSIDE,
    IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER DONE FOR A FIELD-MARSHAL,
    CASTLE PERILOUS,
    AT THE END OF THE STEPPING-STONES,
    JANET SHEEPSHANKS AWAITED THIS SORRY PROCESSION WITH A GRIM
        TIGHTENING OF THE LIPS,
    "I COULDN'T HELP GETTING BEATEN,"
    SUCCESS OFTEN BRED ENVY,
    SAMBO,
    A FEARFUL BLACK COUNTENANCE NODDED AT HIM,
    HUGH JOHN TOOK HIS WAY DOWN THE AVENUE,
    "WAIT TILL THE NEXT TIME,"
    HE WAS OBLIGED TO CLIMB A TREE,
    HUGH JOHN TUGGED HER HAIR,
    DEPOSITED GENERAL-FIELD-MARSHAL SMITH IN THE HORSE-POND,
    GENERALS OF DIVISION, EQUAL IN RANK,
    THE ARMY WAS FINALLY MUSTERED,
    THE BLACK SHEDS,
    THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK SHEDS,
    CAUTIOUSLY HE RETURNED THROUGH THE HEDGE,
    "OH, THE BONNIE LADDIE!"
    "SURRENDER!" CRIED NIPPER DONNAN,
    THE HEAD SMOUTCHY,
    "GOT YOU AT LAST!"
    "WILL YE SAY NOW THAT THE CASTLE IS YOUR FATHER'S?"
    "BUT I WON'T CRY--EVEN TO MYSELF,"
    HE BENT THE WEIGHT OF HIS BODY THIS WAY AND THAT,
    THE PINING CAPTIVE,
    THE SECRET PASSAGE,
    HE SAW A STRETCH OF RIPPLED RIVER,
    HE FLOUNDERED THROUGH,
    "I CREATE YOU GENERAL OF THE COMM'SARIAT,"
    "DON'T YOU SPEAK AGAINST MY FATHER,"
    SAMMY CARTER MUTINOUS,
    "ONE, TWO, THREE--AND A TIGER,"
    "LOOK AT HIM, MADAM," SAID MRS. BAKER,
    TOADY LION SAT PLUMP DOWN,
    "LET ME LOOK AT HIM," SHE SAID,
    LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM,
    "HIT HARD, BRAVE SOLDIER,"
    "WASN'T IT SPLENDID?"
    TOADY LION PREFERRED TO SLEEP IN THE MOST CURIOUS POSITIONS,
    BANTAM CHICKENS,
    THE GIPSIES' WOOD,
    SHE CARRIED A BACK LOAD OF TINWARE,
    THE OLDEST IMPLEMENTS INVENTED FOR THE PURPOSE,
    SHE WENT ON HER WAY,
    "OH, PLEASE DON'T, SIR!"
    WELCOMED BY THE ENEMY,
    THE RETURN OF THE TWO SWIFT FOOTMEN,
    HYDRAULIC PRESSURE,
    THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN,
    TROTTING STEADILY THROUGH THE TOWN,
    THE BOUNDING BROTHERS,
    THE LIVING CHAIN,
    SIXPENCE FOR ADMISSION,
    "THEN," SAID PRISSY, "I THINK IT CAN BE MANAGED,"
    TOADY LION STOOD LOOKING ON,
    A SLIM BUNDLE OF LIMP WOE,
    THE GOOD CONDUCT PRIZE,
    "SMELL THAT,"
    A BLIGHTED BEING,
    HE SPRANG OVER THE STILE,
    "IT LOOKS LIKE HALF OF A SIXPENCE WHICH SOMEBODY HAS STEPPED UPON.
        HOW QUAINT!"
    AS IF HER HEART WERE LIGHT WITHIN HER,




Sir Toady Lion.




CHAPTER I.

PRISSY, HUGH JOHN, AND SIR TOADY LION.


It is always difficult to be great, but it is specially difficult when
greatness is thrust upon one, as it were, along with the additional
burden of a distinguished historical name. This was the case with
General Napoleon Smith. Yet when this story opens he was not a
general. That came later, along with the cares of empire and the
management of great campaigns.

But already in secret he was Napoleon Smith, though his nurse
sometimes still referred to him as Johnnie, and his father--but stay.
I will reveal to you the secret of our soldier's life right at the
start. Though a Napoleon, our hero was no Buonaparte. No, his name was
Smith--plain Smith; his father was the owner of four large farms and a
good many smaller ones, near that celebrated Border which separates
the two hostile countries of England and Scotland. Neighbours referred
to the General's father easily as "Picton Smith of Windy Standard,"
from the soughing, mist-nursing mountain of heather and fir-trees
which gave its name to the estate, and to the large farm he had
cultivated himself ever since the death of his wife, chiefly as a
means of distracting his mind, and keeping at a distance loneliness
and sad thoughts.

Hugh John Smith had never mentioned the fact of his Imperial descent
to his father, but in a moment of confidence he had told his old
nurse, who smiled with a world-weary wisdom, which betrayed her
knowledge of the secrets of courts--and said that doubtless it was so.
He had also a brother and sister, but they were not, at that time, of
the race of the Corporal of Ajaccio. On the contrary, Arthur George,
the younger, aged five, was an engine-driver. There was yet another
who rode in a mail-cart, and puckered up his face upon being
addressed in a strange foreign language, as "Was-it-then? A
darling--goo-goo--then it was!" This creature, however, was not owned
as a brother by Hugh John and Arthur George, and indeed may at this
point be dismissed from the story. The former went so far as stoutly
to deny his brother's sex, in the face of such proofs as were daily
afforded by Baby's tendency to slap his sister's face wherever they
met, and also to seize things and throw them on the floor for the
pleasure of seeing them break. Arthur George, however, had secret
hopes that Baby would even yet turn out a satisfactory boy whenever he
saw him killing flies on the window, and on these occasions hounded
him on to yet deadlier exertions. But he dared not mention his
anticipations to his soldier brother, that haughty scion of an
Imperial race. For reasons afterwards to be given, Arthur George was
usually known as Toady Lion.

Then Hugh John had a sister. Her name was Priscilla. Priscilla was
distinguished also, though not in a military sense. She was literary,
and wrote books "on the sly," as Hugh John said. He considered this
secrecy the only respectable part of a very shady business. Specially
he objected to being made to serve as the hero of Priscilla's tales,
and went so far as to promise to "thump" his sister if he caught her
introducing him as of any military rank under that of either general
or colour-sergeant.

"Look here, Pris," he said on one occasion, "if you put me into your
beastly girl books all about dolls and love and trumpery, I'll bat you
over the head with a wicket!"

"Hum--I dare say, if you could catch me," said Priscilla, with her
nose very much in the air.

"Catch you! I'll catch and bat you now if you say much."

"Much, much! Can't, can't! There! 'Fraid cat! Um-m-um!"

"By Jove, then, I just will!"

It is sad to be obliged to state here, in the very beginning of these
veracious chronicles, that at this time Prissy and Napoleon Smith were
by no means model children, though Prissy afterwards marvellously
improved. Even their best friends admitted as much, and as for their
enemies--well, their old gardener's remarks when they chased each
other over his newly planted beds would be out of place even in a
military periodical, and might be the means of preventing a book with
Mr. Gordon Browne's nice pictures from being included in some
well-conducted Sunday-school libraries.

General Napoleon Smith could not catch Priscilla (as, indeed, he well
knew before he started), especially when she picked up her skirts and
went right at hedges and ditches like a young colt. Napoleon looked
upon this trait in Prissy's character as degrading and unsportsmanlike
in the extreme. He regarded long skirts, streaming hair, and flapping,
aggravating pinafores as the natural handicap of girls in the race of
life, and as particularly useful when they "cheeked" their brothers.
It was therefore wicked to neutralise these equalising disadvantages
by strings tied round above the knees, or by the still more scientific
device of a sash suspended from the belt before, passed between
Prissy's legs, and attached to the belt behind.

But, then, as Napoleon admitted even at ten years of age, girls are
capable of anything; and to his dying day he has never had any reason
to change his opinion--at least, so far as he has yet got.

       *       *       *       *       *

"All right, then, I will listen to your old stuff if you will say you
are sorry, and promise to be my horse, and let me lick you for an hour
afterwards--besides giving me a penny."

It was thus that Priscilla, to whom in after times great lights of
criticism listened with approval, was compelled to stoop to artifice
and bribery in order to secure and hold her first audience. Whereupon
the authoress took paper from her pocket, and as she did so, held the
manuscript with its back to Napoleon Smith, in order to conceal the
suspicious shortness of the lines. But that great soldier instantly
detected the subterfuge.

"It's a penny more for listening to poetry!" he said, with sudden
alacrity.

"I know it is," replied Prissy sadly, "but you might be nice about it
just this once. I'm dreadfully, dreadfully poor this week, Hugh John!"

"So am I," retorted Napoleon Smith sternly; "if I wasn't, do you think
I would listen at all to your beastly old poetry? Drive on!"

Thus encouraged, Priscilla meekly began--

    "_My love he is a soldier bold,
      And my love is a knight;
    He girds him in a coat of mail,
      When he goes forth to fight._"

"That's not quite so bad as usual," said Napoleon condescendingly,
toying meanwhile with the lash of an old dog-whip he had just "boned"
out of the harness-room. Priscilla beamed gratefully upon her critic,
and proceeded--

    "_He rides him forth across the sand_----"

"Who rides whom?" cried Napoleon. "Didn't the fool ride a horse?"

"It means himself," said Priscilla meekly.

"Then why doesn't _it_ say so?" cried the critic triumphantly, tapping
his boot with the "boned" dog-whip just like any ordinary lord of
creation in presence of his inferiors.

"It's poetry," explained Priscilla timidly.

"It's silly!" retorted Napoleon, judicially and finally.

Priscilla resumed her reading in a lower and more hurried tone. She
knew that she was skating over thin ice.

    "_He rides him forth across the sand,
      Upon a stealthy steed._"

"You mean 'stately,' you know," interrupted Napoleon--somewhat rudely,
Priscilla thought. Yet he was quite within his rights, for Priscilla
had not yet learned that a critic always knows what you mean to say
much better than you do yourself.

"No, I don't mean 'stately,'" said Priscilla, "I mean 'stealthy,' the
way a horse goes on sand. You go and gallop on the sea-shore and
you'll find out."

"I shan't. I haven't got any sea-shore," said Napoleon. "But do hurry.
I've listened quite a pennyworth now."

    "_He rides him forth across the sand,
      Upon a stealthy steed,
    And when he sails upon the sea,
      He plays upon a reed!_"

"Great soft _he_ was," cried Napoleon Smith; "and if ever I hear you
say that I did such a thing----"

Priscilla hurried on more quickly than ever.

    "_In all the world there's none can do
      The deeds that he hath done:
    When he hath slain his enemies,
      Then he comes back alone._"

"That's better!" said Napoleon, nodding encouragement. "At any rate it
isn't long. Now, give me my penny."

"Shan't," said Priscilla, the pride of successful achievement swelling
in her breast; "besides, it isn't Saturday yet, and you've only
listened to three verses anyway. You will have to listen to ever so
much more than that before you get a penny."

"Hugh John! Priscilla!" came a voice from a distance.

The great soldier Napoleon Smith instantly effected a retreat in
masterly fashion behind a gooseberry bush.

"There's Jane calling us," said Priscilla; "she wants us to go in and
be washed for dinner."

"Course she does," sneered Napoleon; "think she's out screeching like
that for fun? Well, let her. I am not going in to be towelled till I'm
all over red and scurfy, and get no end of soap in my eyes."

"But Jane wants you; she'll be _so_ cross if you don't come."

"_I_ don't care for Jane," said Napoleon Smith with dignity, but all
the same making himself as small as possible behind his gooseberry
bush.

"But if you don't come in, Jane will tell father----"

"_I_ don't care for father--" the prone but gallant General was
proceeding to declare in the face of Priscilla's horrified
protestations that he mustn't speak so, when a slow heavy step was
heard on the other side of the hedge, and a deep voice uttered the
single syllable, "_John!_"

"Yes, father," a meek young man standing up behind the gooseberry bush
instantly replied: he was trying to brush himself as clean as
circumstances would permit. "Yes, father; were you calling me,
father?"

Incredible as it seems, the meek and apologetic words were those of
that bold enemy of tyrants, General Napoleon Smith.

Priscilla smiled at the General as he emerged from the hands of Jane,
"red and scurfy," just as he had said. She smiled meaningly and
aggravatingly, so that Napoleon was reduced to shaking his clenched
fist covertly at her.

"Wait till I get you out," he said, using the phrase time-honoured by
such occasions.

Priscilla Smith only smiled more meaningly still. "First catch your
hare!" she said under her breath.

Napoleon Smith stalked in to lunch, the children's dinner at the house
of Windy Standard, with an expression of fixed and Byronic gloom on
his face, which was only lightened by the sight of his favourite
pigeon-pie (with a lovely crust) standing on the side-board.

"Say grace, Hugh John," commanded his father.

And General Napoleon Smith said grace with all the sweet innocence of
a budding angel singing in the cherub choir, aiming at the same time a
kick at his sister underneath the table, which overturned a footstool
and damaged the leg of a chair.




CHAPTER II.

THE GOSPEL OF DASHT-MEAN.


It was on the day preceding a great review near the Border town of
Edam, that Hugh John Picton Smith first became a soldier and a
Napoleon. His father's house was connected by a short avenue with a
great main road along which king and beggar had for a thousand years
gone posting to town. Now the once celebrated highway lies deserted,
for along the heights to the east run certain bars of metal, shining
and parallel, over which rush all who can pay the cost of a
third-class ticket--a roar like thunder preceding them, white steam
and sulphurous reek wreathing after them. The great highway beneath is
abandoned to the harmless impecunious bicyclist, and on the North Road
the sweeping cloud dust has it all its own way.

But Hugh John loved the great thoroughfare, deserted though it was. To
his mind there could be no loneliness upon its eye-taking stretches,
for who knew but out of the dust there might come with a clatter Mr.
Dick Turpin, late of York and Tyburn; Robert the Bruce, charging south
into England with his Galloway garrons, to obtain some fresh English
beef wherewithal to feed his scurvy Scots; or (best of all) his
Majesty King George's mail-coach Highflyer, the picture of which,
coloured and blazoned, hung in his father's workroom.

People told him that all these great folks were long since dead. But
Hugh John knew better than to believe any "rot" grown-ups might choose
to palm off on him. What did grown-ups know anyway? They were rich, of
course. Unlimited shillings were at their command; and as for
pennies--well, all the pennies in the world lived in their breeches'
pockets. But what use did they make of these god-like gifts? Did you
ever meet them at the tuck-shop down in the town buying fourteen
cheese-cakes for a shilling, as any sensible person would? Did they
play with "real-real trains," drawn by locomotives of shining brass?
No! they preferred either one lump of sugar or none at all in their
tea. This showed how much they knew about what was good for them.

So if such persons informed him that Robert the Bruce had been dead
some time, or showed him the rope with which Turpin was hung, coiled
on a pedestal in a horrid dull museum (free on Saturdays, 10 to 4),
Hugh John Picton looked and nodded, for he was an intelligent boy.
If you didn't nod sometimes as if you were taking it all in, they
would explain it all over again to you--with abominable dates and
additional particulars, which they would even ask you afterwards if
you remembered.

[Illustration: "MR. DICK TURPIN, LATE OF YORK AND TYBURN."]

For many years Hugh John had gone every day down to the porter's lodge
at the end of the avenue, and though old Betty the rheumaticky warder
was not allowed to let him out, he stared happily enough through the
bars. It was a white gate of strong wood, lovely to swing on if you
happened to be there when it was opened for a carriageful of
calling-folk in the afternoon, or for Hugh John's father when he went
out a-riding.

But you had to hide pretty quick behind the laurels, and rush out in
that strictly limited period before old Betty found her key, and yet
after the tail of Agincourt, his father's great grey horse, had
switched round the corner. If you were the least late, Betty would get
ahead of you, and the gates of Paradise would be shut. If you were a
moment too soon, it was just as bad--or even worse. For then the voice
of "He-whom-it-was-decidedly-most-healthy-to-obey" would sound up the
road, commanding instant return to the Sandheap or the High Garden.

So on these occasions Hugh John mostly brought Sir Toady Lion with
him--otherwise Arthur George the Sturdy, and at yet other times
variously denominated Prince Murat, the Old Guard, the mob that was
scattered with the whiff of grapeshot, and (generally) the whole
Grand Army of the First Empire. Toady Lion (his own first effort at
the name of his favourite hero Richard Coeur-de-Lion) had his
orders, and with guile and blandishments held Betty in check till the
last frisk of Agincourt's tail had disappeared round the corner. Then
Hugh John developed his plans of assault, and was soon swinging on the
gate.

"Out of the way with you, Betty," he would cry, "or you will get
hurt--sure."

For the white gate shut of itself, and you had only to push it open,
jump on, check it at the proper place on the return journey, and with
your foot shove off again to have scores and scores of lovely swings.
Then Betty would go up the avenue and shout for her husband, who was
the aforesaid crusty old gardener. She would have laid down her life
for Toady Lion, but by no means even a part of it for Hugh John, which
was unfair. Old Betty had once been upset by the slam of the gate on a
windy day, and so was easily intimidated by the shouts of the horseman
and the appalling motion of his white five-barred charger.

Such bliss, however, was transient, and might have to be expiated in
various ways--at best with a slap from the hand of Betty (which was as
good as nothing at all), at worst, by a visit to father's
workroom--which could not be thought upon without a certain sense of
solemnity, as if Sunday had turned up once too often in the middle of
the week.

But upon this great day of which I have to tell, Hugh John had been
honourably digging all the morning in the sand-hole. He had on his
red coat, which was his most secret pride, and he was devising a
still more elaborate system of fortification. Bastion and trench,
scarp and counter-scarp, lunette and ravelenta (a good word), Hugh
John had made them all, and he was now besieging his own creation with
the latest thing in artillery, calling "Boom!" when he fired off his
cannon, and "Bang-whack!" as often as the projectile hit the wall and
brought down a foot of the noble fortification, lately so laboriously
constructed and so tenderly patted into shape.

Suddenly there came a sound which always made the heart of Hugh John
beat in his side. It was the low thrilling reverberation of the drum.
He had only time to dash for his cap, which he had filled with sand
and old nails in order to "be a bomb-shell"; empty it, put it on his
head, gird on his London sword-with-the-gold-hilt, and fly.

As he ran down the avenue the shrill fifes kept stinging his ears and
making him feel as if needles were running up and down his back. It
was at this point that Hugh John had a great struggle with himself.
Priscilla and Toady Lion were playing at "House" and "Tea-parties"
under the weeping elm on the front lawn. It was a debasing taste,
certainly, but after all blood was thicker than water. And--well, he
could not bear that they should miss the soldiers. But then, on the
other hand, if he went back the troops might be past before he reached
the gate, and Betty, he knew well, would not let him out to run after
them, and the park wall was high.

In this desperate strait Hugh John called all the resources of
religion to his aid.

"It would," he said, "be dasht-mean to go off without telling them."

Hugh John did not know exactly what "dasht-mean" meant. But he had
heard his cousin Fred (who was grown up, had been a year at school,
and wore a tall hat on Sundays) tell how all the fellows said that it
was better to die-and-rot than to be "dasht-mean"; and also how those
who in spite of warnings proved themselves "dasht-mean" were sent to a
place called Coventry--which from all accounts seemed to be a
"dasht-mean" locality.

So Hugh John resolved that he would never get sent there, and whenever
a little thing tugged down in his stomach and told him "not to," Hugh
John said, "Hang it! I won't be dasht-mean."--And wasn't.

Grown-ups call these things conscience and religion; but this is how
it felt to Hugh John, and it answered just as well--or even better.

So when the stinging surge of distant pipes sent the wild blood
coursing through his veins, and he felt his face grow cold and prickly
all over, Napoleon Smith started to run down the avenue. He could not
help it. He must see the soldiers or die. But all the same _Tug-tug_
went the little string remorselessly in his stomach.

"I must see them. I must--I must!" he cried, arguing with himself and
trying to drown the inner voice.

"_Tug-tug-tug!_" went the string, worse than that which he once put
round his toe and hung out of the window, for Tom Cannon the
under-keeper to wake him with at five in the morning to go
rabbit-ferreting.

Hugh John turned towards the house and the weeping elm.

"It's a blooming shame," he said, "and they won't care anyway. But I
_can't_ be dasht-mean!"

And so he ran with all his might back to the weeping elm, and with a
warning cry set Prissy and Sir Toady Lion on the alert. Then with
anxious tumultuous heart, and legs almost as invisible as the
twinkling spokes of a bicycle, so quickly did they pass one another,
Hugh John fairly flung himself in the direction of the White Gate.




CHAPTER III.

HOW HUGH JOHN BECAME GENERAL NAPOLEON.


Even dull Betty had heard the music. The White Gate was open, and with
a wild cry Hugh John sprang through. Betty had a son in the army, and
her deaf old ears were quickened by the fife and drum.

"Come back, Master Hugh!" she cried, as he passed through and stood on
the roadside, just as the head of the column, marching easily, turned
the corner of the White Road and came dancing and undulating towards
him. Hugh John's heart danced also. It was still going fast with
running so far; but at sight of the soldiers it took a new movement,
just like little waves on a lake when they jabble in the wind, so nice
and funny when you feel it--tickly too--down at the bottom of your
throat.

The first who came were soldiers in a dark uniform with very stern,
bearded officers, who attended finely to discipline, for they were
about to enter the little town of Edam, which lay just below the white
gates of Windy Standard.

So intently they marched that no one cast a glance at Hugh John
standing with his drawn sword, giving the salute which his friend
Sergeant Steel had taught him as each company passed. Not that Hugh
John cared, or even knew that they did not see him. They were the
crack volunteer regiment of the Grey City beyond the hills, and their
standard of efficiency was something tremendous.

Then came red-coats crowned with helmets, red-coats tipped with
Glengarry bonnets, and one or two brass bands of scattering volunteer
regiments. Hugh John saluted them all. No one paid the least attention
to him. He did not indeed expect any one to notice him--a small dusty
boy with a sword too big for him standing at the end of the road under
the shadow of the elms. Why should these glorious creations deign to
notice him--shining blades, shouldered arms, flashing bayonets, white
pipe-clayed belts? Were they not as gods, knowing good and evil?

But all the same he saluted every one of them impartially as they
came, and the regiments swung past unregarding, dust-choked, and
thirsty.

Then at last came the pipes and the waving tartans. Something cracked
in Hugh John's throat, and he gave a little cry, so that his old
nurse, Janet Sheepshanks, anxious for his welfare, came to take him
away. But he struck at her--his own dear Janet--and fled from her
grasp to the other side of the road, where he was both safer and
nearer to the soldiers. Swinging step, waving plumes, all in review
order on came the famous regiment, every man stepping out with a
trained elasticity which went to the boy's heart. Thus and not
otherwise the Black Watch followed their pipers. Hugh John gave a long
sigh when they had passed, and the pipes dulled down the dusky glade.

Then came more volunteers, and yet more and more. Would they never
end? And ever the sword of Hugh John Picton flashed to the salute, and
his small arm waxed weary as it rose and fell.

Then happened the most astonishing thing in the world, the greatest
event of Hugh John's life. For there came to his ear a new sound, the
clatter of cavalry hoofs. A bugle rang out, and Hugh John's eyes
watched with straining eagerness the white dust rise and swirl behind
the columns. Perhaps--who knows?--this was his reward for not being
dasht-mean! But now Hugh John had forgotten Prissy and Toady Lion,
father and nurse alike, heaven, earth--and everything else. There was
no past for him. He was the soldier of all time. His dusty red coat
and his flashing sword were the salute of the universal spirit of man
to the god of war--also other fine things of which I have no time to
write.

For the noble grey horses, whose predecessors Napoleon had watched so
wistfully at Waterloo, came trampling along, tossing their heads with
an obvious sense of their own worth as a spectacle. Hugh John paled
to the lips at sight of them, but drew himself more erect than ever.
He had seen foot-soldiers and volunteers before, but never anything
like this.

On they came, a fine young fellow leading them, sitting carelessly on
the noblest charger of all. Perhaps he was kindly by nature. Perhaps
he had a letter from his sweetheart in his breastpocket. Perhaps--but
it does not matter, at any rate he was young and happy, as he sat
erect, leading the "finest troop in the finest regiment in the world."
He saw the small dusty boy in the red coat under the elm-trees. He
marked his pale twitching face, his flashing eye, his erect carriage,
his soldierly port. The fate of Hugh John stood on tiptoe. He had
never seen any being so glorious as this. He could scarce command
himself to salute. But though he trembled in every limb, and his under
lip "wickered" strangely, the hand which held the sword was steady,
and went through the beautiful movements of the military salute which
Sergeant Steel of the Welsh Fusiliers had taught him, with exactness
and decorum.

The young officer smiled. His own hand moved to the response almost
involuntarily, as if Hugh John had been one of his own troopers.

The boy's heart stood still. Could this thing be? A real soldier had
saluted him!

But there was something more marvellous yet to come. A sweet spring of
good deeds welled up in that young officer's breast. Heaven speed him
(as doubtless it will) in his wooing, and make him ere his time a
general, with the Victoria Cross upon his breast. But though (as I
hope) he rise to be Commander-in-Chief, he will never do a prettier
action than that day, when the small grimy boy stood under the
elm-trees at the end of the avenue of Windy Standard. This is what he
did. He turned about in his saddle.

[Illustration: "IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER DONE FOR A
FIELD-MARSHAL."]

"_Attention, men, draw swords!_" he cried, and his voice rang like a
trumpet, so grand it was--at least so Hugh John thought.

There came a glitter of unanimous steel as the swords flashed into
line. The horses tossed their heads at the stirring sound, and jingled
their accoutrements as the men gathered their bridle reins up in their
left hands.

"_Eyes right! Carry swords!_" came again the sharp command.

And every blade made an arc of glittering light as it came to the
salute. It could not have been better done for a field-marshal.

No fuller cup of joy was ever drunk by mortal. The tears welled up in
Hugh John's eyes as he stood there in the pride of the honour done to
him. To be knighted was nothing to this. He had been acknowledged as a
soldier by the greatest soldier there. Hugh John did not doubt that
this glorious being was he who had led the Greys in the charge at
Waterloo. Who else could have done that thing?

He was no longer a little dusty boy. He stood there glorified,
ennobled. The world was almost too full.

"_Eyes front! Slope swords!_" rang the words once more.

The pageant passed by. Only the far drum-throb came back as he stood
speechless and motionless, till his father rode up on his way home,
and seeing the boy asked him what he was doing there. Then for all
reply a little clicking hitch came suddenly in his throat. He wanted
to laugh, but somehow instead the tears ran down his cheeks, and he
gasped out a word or two which sounded like somebody else's voice.

"I'm not hurt, father," he said, "I'm not crying. It was only that the
Scots Greys saluted me. And I _can't_ help it, father. It goes
_tick-tick_ in my throat, and I can't keep it back. But I'm not
crying, father! I'm not indeed!"

Then the stern man gathered the great soldier up and set him across
his saddle--for Hugh John was alone, the others having long ago gone
back with Janet Sheepshanks. And his father did not say anything, but
let him sit in front with the famous sword in his hands which had
brought about such strange things. And even thus rode our hero
home--Hugh John Picton no more, but rather General Napoleon Smith; nor
shall his rank be questioned on any army roster of strong unblenching
hearts.

But late that night Hugh John stole down the hushed avenue, his bare
feet pattering through the dust which the dew was making cool. He
climbed the gate and stood under the elm, with the wind flapping his
white nightgown like a battle flag. Then clasping his hands, he took
the solemn binding oath of his religion, "_The Scots Greys saluted me.
May I die-and-rot if ever I am dasht-mean again!_"




CHAPTER IV.

CASTLE PERILOUS.


In one corner of the property of Hugh John's father stood an ancient
castle--somewhat doubtfully of it, however, for it was claimed as
public property by the adjoining abbey town, now much decayed and
fallen from its high estate, but desirous of a new lease of life as a
tourist and manufacturing centre. The castle and the abbey had for
centuries been jealous neighbours, treacherous friends, embattled
enemies according to the fluctuating power of those who possessed
them. The lord of the castle harried the abbot and his brethren. The
abbot promptly retaliated by launching, in the name of the Church, the
dread ban of excommunication against the freebooter. The castle
represented feudal rights, the abbey popular and ecclesiastical
authority.

And so it was still. Mr. Picton Smith had, indeed, only bought the
property a few years before the birth of our hero; but, among other
encumbrances, he had taken over a lawsuit with the town concerning the
castle, which for years had been dragging its slow length along. Edam
Abbey was a show-place of world-wide repute, and the shillings of the
tourist constituted a very important item in the finances of the
overburdened municipality. If the Council and magistrates of the good
town of Edam could add the Castle of Windy Standard to their
attractions, the resultant additional sixpence a head would go far
towards making up the ancient rental of the town parks, which now let
for exactly half of their former value.

But Mr. Picton Smith was not minded thus tamely to hand over an
ancient fortress, secured to him by deed and charter. He declared at
once that he would resist the claims of the town by every means in his
power. He would, however, refuse right-of-way to no respectable
sightseer. The painter, all unchallenged, might set up his easel
there, the poet meditate, even the casual wanderer in search of the
picturesque and romantic, have free access to these gloomy and
desolate halls. The townspeople would be at liberty to conduct their
friends and visitors thither. But Mr. Smith was resolved that the
ancient fortalice of the Windy Standard should not be made a vulgar
show. Sandwich papers and ginger-beer bottles would not be permitted
to profane the green sward of the courtyard, across which had so
often ridden all the chivalry of the dead Lorraines.

"Those who want sixpenny shows will find plenty at Edam Fair," was Mr.
Picton Smith's ultimatum. And when he had once committed himself, like
most of his stalwart name, Mr. Smith had the reputation of being very
set in his mind.

But in spite of this the town asserted its right-of-way through the
courtyard. A footpath was said to have passed that way by which
persons might go to and fro to kirk and market.

"I have no doubt a footpath passed through my dining-room a few
centuries ago," said Mr. Smith, "but that does not compel me to keep
my front and back doors open for all the rabble of Edam to come and go
at their pleasure."

And forthwith he locked his lodge gates and bought the largest mastiff
he could obtain. The castle stood on an island rather more than a mile
long, a little below the mansion house. A wooden bridge led over the
deeper, narrower, and more rapid branch of the Edam River from the
direction of the abbey and town. Across the broader and shallower
branch there could be traced, from the house of Windy Standard, the
remains of an ancient causeway. This, in the place where the stream
was to be crossed, had become a series of stepping-stones over which
Hugh John and Priscilla could go at a run (without falling in and
wetting themselves more than once in three or four times), but which
still constituted an impregnable barrier to the short fat legs of
Toady Lion--who usually stood on the shore and proclaimed his woes to
the world at large till somebody carried him over and deposited him on
the castle island.

Affairs were in this unsettled condition when, at twelve years of age,
Hugh John ceased to be Hugh John, and became, without, however, losing
his usual surname of Smith, one of the august and imperial race of the
Buonapartes.

It was a clear June evening, the kind of night when the whole
landscape seems to have been newly swept, washed down, and generally
spring-cleaned. All nature spoke peace to Janet Sheepshanks,
housekeeper, nurse, and general responsible female head of the house
of Windy Standard, when a procession came towards her across the
stepping-stones over the broad Edam water from the direction of the
castle island. Never had such a disreputable sight presented itself to
the eyes of Janet Sheepshanks. At once douce and severe, sharp-tongued
and covertly affectionate, she represented the authority of a father
who was frequently absent from them, and the memory of a dead mother
which remained to the three children in widely different degrees. To
Priscilla her mother was a loving being, gracious alike by the tender
sympathy of her voice and by the magic of a touch which healed all
childish troubles with the kiss of peace upon the place "to make it
well." To Hugh John she had been a confidant to whom he could rush,
eager and dishevelled, with the tale of the glorious defeat of some
tin enemy (for even in those prehistoric days Hugh John had been a
soldier), and who, smoothing back his ruffled hair, was prepared to
join as eagerly as himself in all his tiny triumphs. But to Toady
Lion, though he hushed the shrill persistence of his treble to a
reverent murmur when he talked of "muvver," she was only an
imagination, fostered mostly by Priscilla--his notion of motherhood
being taken from his rough-handed loving Janet Sheepshanks; while the
tomb in the village churchyard was a place to which he had no desire
to accompany his mother, and from whose gloomy precincts he sought to
escape as soon as possible.




CHAPTER V.

THE DECLARATION OF WAR.


But, meanwhile, Janet Sheepshanks stands at the end of the
stepping-stones, and Janet is hardly a person to keep waiting anywhere
near the house of Windy Standard.

Over the stepping-stones came as leader Priscilla Smith, her head
thrown back, straining in every nerve with the excitement of carrying
Sir Toady Lion, whose scratched legs and shoeless feet dangled over
the stream. Immediately beneath her, and wading above the knee in the
rush of the water, there staggered through the shallows Hugh John,
supporting his sister with voice and hand--or, as he would have said,
"boosting her up" whenever she swayed riverward with her burden,
pushing her behind when she hesitated, and running before to offer
his back as an additional stepping-stone when the spaces were wide
between the boulders.

Janet Sheepshanks waited grimly for her charges on the bank, and her
eyes seemed to deceive her, words to fail her, as the children came
nearer. Never had such a sight been seen near the decent house of
Windy Standard. Miss Priscilla and her pinafore were represented by a
ragged tinkler's lass with a still more ragged frill about her neck.
Her cheeks and hands were as variously scratched as if she had fallen
into a whole thicket of brambles. Her face, too, was pale, and the
tatooed places showed bright scarlet against the whiteness of her
skin. She had lost a shoe, and her dress was ripped to the knee by a
great ragged triangular tear, which flapped wet about her ankles as
she walked.

Sir Toady Lion was somewhat less damaged, but still showed manifold
signs of rough usage. His lace collar, the pride of Janet Sheepshanks'
heart, was torn nearly off his shoulders, and now hung jagged and
unsightly down his back. Several buttons of his well-ordered tunic
were gone, and as to his person he was mud as far above the knees as
could be seen without turning him upside down.

But Hugh John--words are vain to describe the plight of Hugh John. One
eye was closed, and began to be discoloured, taking on above the
cheekbone the shot green and purple of a half-ripe plum. His lip was
cut, and a thin thread of scarlet stealing down his brow told of a
broken head. What remained of his garments presented a ruin more
complete, if less respectable, than the ancient castle of the Windy
Standard. Neither shoe nor shoe-string, neither stocking nor collar,
remained intact upon him. On his bare legs were the marks of cruel
kicks, and for ease of transport he carried the _debris_ of his jacket
under his arm. He had not the remotest idea where his cap had gone to.

[Illustration: "NO WONDER THAT JANET SHEEPSHANKS AWAITED THIS SORRY
PROCESSION WITH A GRIM TIGHTENING OF THE LIPS."]

No wonder that Janet Sheepshanks awaited this sorry procession with a
grim tightening of the lips, or that her hand quivered with the desire
of punishment, even while her kind and motherly heart yearned to be
busy repairing damages and binding up the wounded. Of this feeling,
however, it was imperative that for the present, in the interests of
discipline, she should show nothing.

It was upon Priscilla, as the eldest in years and senior responsible
officer in charge, that Janet first turned the vials of her wrath.

"Eh, Priscilla Smith, but ye are a ba-a-ad, bad lassie. Ye should ha'e
your bare back slashit wi' nettles! Where ha'e ye been, and what ha'e
ye done to these twa bairns? Ye shall be marched straight to your
father, and if he doesna gar ye loup when ye wad raither stand still,
and claw where ye are no yeuky, he will no be doing his duty to the
Almichty, and to your puir mither that's lang syne in her restin'
grave in the kirk-yaird o' Edom."

By which fervent address in her native tongue, Janet meant that Mr.
Smith would be decidedly spoiling the child if on this occasion he
spared the rod. Janet could speak good enough formal English when she
chose, for instance to her master on Sabbath, or to the minister on
visitation days; but whenever she was excited she returned to that
vigorous ancient Early English which some miscall a dialect, and of
which she had a noble and efficient command.

To Janet's attack, Priscilla answered not a word either of explanation
or apology. She recognised that the case had gone far beyond that. She
only set Sir Toady Lion on his feet, and bent down to brush the mud
from his tunic with her usual sisterly gesture. Janet Sheepshanks
thrust her aside without ceremony.

"My wee man," she said, "what have they done to you?"

Toady Lion began volubly, and in his usual shrill piping voice, to
make an accusation against certain bad boys who had "hit him," and
"hurted him," and "kicked him." And now when at last he was safely
delivered and lodged in the well-proven arms of Janet Sheepshanks his
tears flowed apace, and made clean furrows down the woebegone
grubbiness of his face.

Priscilla walked by Janet's side, white and silent, nerving herself
for the coming interview. At ordinary times Janet Sheepshanks was
terrible enough, and her word law in all the precincts of Windy
Standard. But Priscilla knew that she must now face the anger of her
father; and so, with this in prospect, the railing accusations of her
old nurse scarcely so much as reached her ears.

Hugh John, stripped of all military pomp, limped behind--a short, dry,
cheerless sob shaking him at intervals. But in reality this was more
the protest of ineffectual anger than any concession to unmanly
weakness.




CHAPTER VI.

FIRST BLOOD.


Ten minutes later, and without, as Jane Sheepshanks said, "so muckle
as a sponge or a brush-and-comb being laid upon them," the three stood
before their father. Silently Janet had introduced them, and now as
silently she stood aside to listen to the evidence--and, as she
put it, "keep the maister to his duty, and mind him o' his
responsibilities to them that's gane."

Janet Sheepshanks never forgot that she had been maid for twenty years
to the dead mother of the children, nor that she had received "the
bits o' weans" at her hand as a dying charge. She considered herself,
with some reason, to be the direct representative of the missing
parent, and referred to Priscilla, Toady Lion, and Hugh John as "my
bairns," just as, in moments of affection, she would still speak to
them of "my bonnie lassie your mither," as if the dead woman were
still one of her flock.

For a full minute Mr. Picton Smith gazed speechless at the spectacle
before him. He had been writing something that crinkled his brow and
compressed his lips, and at the patter of the children's feet in the
passage outside his door, as they ceremoniously marshalled themselves
to enter, he had turned about on his great office chair with a smile
of expectation and anticipation. The door opened, and Janet
Sheepshanks pushed in first Sir Toady Lion, still voluble and calling
for vengeance on the "bad, bad boys at the castle that had striked him
and hurted his dear Prissy." Priscilla herself stood white-lipped and
dumb, and through the awful silence pulsed the dry, recurrent, sobbing
catch in the throat of Hugh John.

Mr. Picton Smith was a stern man, whose great loss had caused him to
shut up the springs of his tenderness from the world. But they flowed
the sweeter and the rarer underneath; and though his grave and
dignified manner daunted his children on the occasion of any notable
evil-doing, they had no reason to be afraid of him.

"Well, what is the meaning of this?" he said, his face falling into a
greyer and graver silence at the sound of Hugh John's sobs, and
turning to Priscilla for explanation.

Meanwhile Sir Toady Lion was pursuing the subject with his usual
shrill alacrity.

"Be quiet, sir," said his father. "I will hear you all one by one, but
let Priscilla begin--she is the eldest."

"We went to the castle after dinner, over by the stepping-stones,"
began Priscilla, fingering nervously the frill of the torn pinafore
about her throat, "and when we got to the castle we found out that our
pet lamb Donald had come after us by the ford; and he was going
everywhere about the castle, trying to rub his bell off his neck on
the gate-posts and on the stones at the corners."

"Yes, and I stooded on a rock, and Donald he butted me over behind!"
came the voice of Sir Toady Lion in shrill explanation of his personal
share in the adventure.

"And then we played on the grass in the inside of the castle. Toady
Lion and I were plaiting daisy-chains and garlands for Donald, and
Hugh John was playing at being the Prisoner of Chillyon: he had tied
himself to the gate-post with a rope."

"'Twasn't," muttered Hugh John, who was a stickler for accuracy; "it
was a plough-chain!"

"And it rattled," added Sir Toady Lion, not to be out of the running.

"And just when we were playing nicely, a lot of horrid boys from the
town came swarming and clambering in. They had run over the bridge and
climbed the gate, and then they began calling us names and throwing
mud. So Hugh John said he would tell on them."

"Didn't," interrupted Hugh John indignantly. "I said I'd knock the
heads off them if they didn't stop and get out; and they only laughed
and said things about father. So I hit one of them with a stone."

"Then," continued Priscilla, gaining confidence from a certain curious
spark of light which began to burn steadily in her father's eyes,
"after Hugh John threw the stone, the horrid boys all came and said
that they would kill us, and that we had no business there anyway."

"They frowed me down the well, and I went splass! Yes, indeedy!"
interrupted Toady Lion, who had imagination.

"Then Donald, our black pet lamb, that is, came into the court, and
they all ran away after him and caught him. First he knocked down one
or two of them, and then they put a rope round his neck and began to
take rides on his back."

"Yes, and he bleated and 'kye-kyed' just feeful!" whimpered Toady
Lion, beginning to weep all over again at the remembrance.

But the Smith of the imperial race only clenched his torn hands and
looked at his bruised knuckles.

"So Hugh John said he would kill them if they did not let Donald go,
and that he was a soldier. But they only laughed louder, and one of
them struck him across the lip with a stick--I know him, he's the
butch----"

"Shut up, Pris!" shouted Hugh John, with sudden fierceness, "it's
dasht-mean to tell names."

"Be quiet, sir," said his father severely; "let your sister finish her
story in her own way."

But for all that there was a look of some pride on his face. At that
moment Mr. Picton Smith was not sorry to have Hugh John for a son.

"Well," said Priscilla, who had no such scruples as to telling on her
enemies, "I won't tell if you say not. But that was the boy who hurt
Donald the worst."

"Well, I smashed him for that!" muttered Napoleon Smith.

"And then when Hugh John saw them dragging Donald away and heard him
bleating----"

"And 'kye-kying' big, big tears, big as cherries!" interjected Toady
Lion, who considered every narrative incomplete to which he did not
contribute.

"He was overcome with rage and anger"--at this point Priscilla began
to talk by the book, the dignity of the epic tale working on her--"and
he rushed upon them fearlessly, though they were ten to one; and they
all struck him and kicked him. But Hugh John fought like a lion."

"Yes, like Wichard Toady Lion," cried the namesake of that hero, "and
I helpted him and bited a bad boy on the leg, and didn't let go though
he kicked and hurted feeful! Yes, indeedy!"

"And I went to their assistance and fought as Hugh John showed me.
And--I forget the rest," said Priscilla, her epic style suddenly
failing her. Also she felt she must begin to cry very soon, now the
strain was over. So she made haste to finish. "But it was dreadful,
and they swore, and said they would cut Donald's throat. And one boy
took out a great knife and said he knew how to do it. He was the
butch----"

"Shut up, Pris! Now don't you dare!" shouted Hugh John, in his most
warning tones.

"And when Hugh John rushed in to stop him, he hit him over the head
with a stick, and Hugh John fell down. And, oh! I thought he was dead,
and I didn't know what to do" (Priscilla was crying in good earnest
now); "and I ran to him and tried to lift him up. But I could not--he
was so wobbly and soft."

"I bited the boy's leg. It was dood. I bited hard!" interrupted Toady
Lion, whose mission had been vengeance.

"And when I looked up again they had taken away p-p-poor Donald,"
Priscilla went on spasmodically between her tears, "and I think they
killed him because he belonged to you, and--they said he had no
business there! Oh, they were such horrid cruel boys, and much bigger
than us. And I can't bear that Don should have his throat cut. I was
promised that he should never be sold for mutton, but only clipped for
wool. And he had such a pretty throat to hang daisy-chains on, and was
such a dear, dear thing."

"I don't think they would dare to kill him," said Mr. Smith gravely;
"besides, they could not lift him over the gate. I will send at once
and see. In fact I will go myself!"

There was only anger against the enemy now, and no thought of
chastisement of his own in the heart of Mr. Picton Smith. He was
rising to reach out his hand to his riding-whip, when General Napoleon
Smith, who, like most great makers of history, had taken little part
in the telling of it, created a diversion which put all thought of
immediate action out of his father's head. He had been standing up,
shoulders squared, arms dressed to his side, head erect, as he had
seen Sergeant Steel do when he spoke to his Colonel. Once or twice he
had swayed slightly, but the heart of the Buonapartes, which beat
bravely in his bosom, brought him up again all standing. Nevertheless
he grew even whiter and whiter, till, all in a moment, he gave a
little lurch forward, checked himself, and again looked straight
before him. Then he sobbed out once suddenly and helplessly, said "I
couldn't help getting beaten, father--there were too many of them!"
and fell over all of a piece on the hearthrug.

At which his father's face grew very still and angry as he gathered
the great General gently in his arms and carried him upstairs to his
own little white cot.




CHAPTER VII.

THE POOR WOUNDED HUSSAR.


It is small wonder that Mr. Picton Smith was full of anger. His castle
had been invaded and desecrated, his authority as proprietor defied,
his children insulted and abused. As a magistrate he felt bound to
take notice both of the outrage and of the theft of his property. As a
father he could not easily forget the plight in which his three
children had appeared before him.

But in his schemes of vengeance he reckoned without that distinguished
military officer, General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith. For this
soldier had been promoted on his bed of sickness. He had read
somewhere that in his profession (as in most others) success quite
often bred envy and neglect, but that to the unsuccessful, promotion
and honour were sometimes awarded as a sort of consolation
sweepstakes. So, having been entirely routed and plundered by the
enemy, it came to Hugh John in the watches of the night--when, as he
put it, "his head was hurting like fun" that it was time for him to
take the final step in his own advancement.

So on the next morning he announced the change in his name and style
to his army as it filed in to visit him. The army was on the whole
quite agreeable.

"But I'm afraid I shall never remember all that, Mr.
General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith!" said Priscilla.

"Well, you'd better!" returned the wounded hero, as truculently as he
could for the bandages and the sticking-plaster, in which he was
swathed after the fashion of an Egyptian mummy partially unwrapped.

"What a funny smell!" piped Toady Lion. "Do field-marshals _all_ smell
like that?"

"Get out, silly!" retorted the wounded officer. "Don't you know that's
the stuff they rub on the wounded when they have fought bravely?
That's arnicay!"

"And what do they yub on them when they don't fight bravely?"
persisted Toady Lion, who had had enough of fighting, and who in his
heart was resolved that the next time he would "yun away" as hard as
he could, a state of mind not unusual after the _zip-zip_ of bullets
is heard for the first time.

"First of all they catch them and kick them for being cowards. Then
they shoot at them till they are dead; and may the Lord have mercy on
their souls! Amen!" said General Smith, mixing things for the
information and encouragement of Sir Toady Lion.

Presently the children were called out to go and play, and the wounded
hero was left alone. His head ached so that he could not read. Indeed,
in any case he could not, for the room was darkened with the intention
of shielding his damaged eyes from the light. General Napoleon could
only watch the flies buzzing round and round, and wish in vain that he
had a fly-flapper at the end of a pole in order to "plop" them, as he
used to do all over the house in the happy days before Janet
Sheepshanks discovered what made the walls and windows so horrid with
dead and dying insects.

"Yes; the squashy ones _were_ rather streaky!" had been the words in
which Hugh John admitted his guilt, after the pole and leathern
flapper were taken from him and burned in the washhouse fire.

Thus in the semi-darkness Hugh John lay watching the flies with the
stealthy intentness of a Red Indian scalper on the trail. It was sad
to lie idly in bed, so bewrapped and swathed that (as he mournfully
remarked), "if one of the brutes were to settle on your nose, you
could only wait for him to crawl up, and then snatch at him with your
left eyelid."

Suddenly the disabled hero bethought himself of something. First,
after listening intently so as to be quite sure that "the children"
were outside the bounds of the house, the wounded general raised
himself on his elbow. But the effort hurt him so much that
involuntarily he said "Outch!" and sank back again on the pillow.

"Crikey, but don't I smell just!" he muttered, when, after one breath
of purer air, he sank back into the pool of arnica vapour. "I suppose
I'll have to howl out for Janet. What a swot!"

"Janet!--Ja-a-a-a-net!" he shouted, and sighed a sigh of relief to
find that at least there was one part of him neither bandaged nor
drowned in arnica.

"Deil tak' the laddie!" cried Janet, who went about her work all day
with one ear cocked toward the chamber of her brave sick soldier;
"what service is there in taking the rigging aff the hoose wi' your
noise? Did ye think I was doon at Edam Cross? What do ye want,
callant, that ye deafen my auld lugs like that? I never heard sic a
laddie!"

But General Smith did not answer any of these questions. He well knew
Janet's tone of simulated anger when she was "putting it on."

"Go and fetch _it_!" he said darkly.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE FAMILIAR SPIRIT.


Now there was a skeleton in the cupboard of General Napoleon Smith. No
distinguished family can be respectable without at least one such. But
that of the new field-marshal was particularly dark and disgraceful.

Very obediently Janet Sheepshanks vanished from the sick-room, and
presently returned with an oblong parcel, which she handed to the hero
of battles.

"Thank you," he said; "are you sure that the children are out?"

"They are sailing paper boats on the mill-dam," said Janet, going to
the window to look.

Hugh John sighed a sigh. He wished he could sail boats on the
mill-dam.

"I hope every boat will go down the mill lade, and get mashed in the
wheel," he said pleasantly.

"For shame, Master Hugh!" replied Janet Sheepshanks, shaking her head
at him, but conscious that he was exactly expressing her own mind, if
she had been lying sick a-bed and had been compelled to listen to some
other housekeeper jingling keys that once were hers, ransacking her
sacredest repositories, and keeping in order the menials of the house.

Hugh John proceeded cautiously to unwrap his family skeleton.
Presently from the folds of tissue paper a very aged and battered
"Sambo" emerged. Now a "Sambo" is a black woolly-haired negro doll of
the fashion of many years ago. This specimen was dressed in simple and
airy fashion in a single red shell jacket. As to the rest, he was bare
and black from head to foot. Janet called him "that horrid object";
but, nevertheless, he was precious in the eyes of Hugh John, and
therefore in hers.

Though twelve years of age, he still liked to carry on dark and covert
intercourse with his ancient "Sambo." In public, indeed, he preached,
in season and out of season, against the folly and wickedness of
dolls. No one but a lassie or a "lassie-boy" would do such a thing. He
laughed at Priscilla for cleaning up her doll's kitchen once a week,
and for organising afternoon tea-parties for her quiet harem. But
secretly he would have liked very well to see Sambo sit at that
bounteous board.

Nevertheless, he instructed Toady Lion every day with doctrine and
reproof that it was "only for girls" to have dolls. And knowing well
that none of his common repositories were so remote and sacred as
long to escape Priscilla's unsleeping eye, or the more stormy though
fitful curiosity of Sir Toady Lion, Hugh John had been compelled to
take his ancient nurse and ever faithful friend Janet into his
confidence. So Sambo dwelt in the housekeeper's pantry and had two
distinct odours. One side of him smelt of paraffin, and the other of
soft soap, which, to a skilled detective, might have revealed the
secret of his dark abode.

But let us not do our hero an injustice.

It was not exactly as a doll that General Smith considered Sambo. By
no means so, indeed. Sometimes he was a distinguished general who came
to take orders from his chief, sometimes an awkward private who needed
to be drilled, and then knocked spinning across the floor for
inattention to orders. For, be it remembered, it was the custom in the
army of Field-Marshal-General Smith for the Commander-in-Chief to
drill the recruits with his own voice, and in the by no means
improbable event of their proving stupid, to knock them endwise with
his own august hand.

But it was as Familiar Spirit, and in the pursuit of occult
divination, that General Napoleon most frequently resorted to Sambo.
He had read all he could find in legend and history concerning that
gruesomely attractive goblin, clothed all in red, which the wicked
Lord Soulis kept in an oaken chest in a castle not so far from his own
father's house of Windy Standard.

And Hugh John saw no reason why Sambo should not be the very one.
Spirits do not die. It is a known fact that they are fond of their
former haunts. What, then, could be clearer? Sambo was evidently Lord
Soulis' Red Imp risen from the dead. Was Sambo not black? The devil
was black. Did Sambo not wear a red coat? Was not the demon of the
oaken chest attired in flaming scarlet, when all cautiously he lifted
the lid at midnight and looked wickedly out upon his master?

Yet the General was conscious that Sambo Soulis was a distinct
disappointment in the part of familiar spirit. He would sit silent,
with his head hanging idiotically on one side, when he was asked to
reveal the deepest secrets of the future, instead of toeing the line
and doing it. Nor was it recorded in the chronicles of Soulis that the
original demon of the chest had had his nose "bashed flat" by his
master, as Hugh John vigorously expressed the damaged appearance of
his own familiar.

Worse than all, Hugh John had tried to keep Sambo in his rabbit-box.
But not only did he utterly fail to put his "fearful head, crowned
with a red night-cap" over the edge of the hutch at the proper
time--as, had he been of respectable parentage, he would not have
failed to do, but, in addition, he developed in his close quarters an
animal odour so pungent and unprofitable that Janet Sheepshanks
refused to admit him into the store-cupboard till he had been
thoroughly fumigated and disinfected. So for a whole week Sambo Soulis
swung ignominiously by the neck from the clothes line, and Hugh John
went about in fear of the questioning of the children or of the
confiscation by his father of his well-beloved but somewhat
unsatisfactory familiar spirit.

It was in order to consult him on a critical point of doctrine and
practice that Hugh John had now sent for Sambo Soulis.

He propped him up before him against a pillow, on which he sat bent
forward at an acute angle from the hips, as if ready to pounce upon
his master and rend him to pieces so soon as the catechism should be
over.

"Look here," said General-Field-Marshal Smith to the oracle,
"supposing the governor tells me to split on Nipper Donnan, the
butcher boy, will it be dasht-mean if I do?"

Sambo Soulis, being disturbed by the delicacy of the question or
perhaps by the wriggling of Hugh John upon his pillow, only lurched
drivellingly forward.

"Sit up and answer," cried his master, "or else I'll hike you out of
that pretty quick, for a silly old owl!"

And with his least bandaged hand he gave Sambo a sound cuff on the
side of his venerable battered head, before propping him up at a new
angle with his chin on his knees.

"Now speak up, Soulis," said General Smith; "I ask you would it be
dasht-mean?"

The oracle was understood to joggle his chin and goggle his eyes. He
certainly did the latter.

"I thought so," said Soulis' master, as is usual in such cases,
interpreting the reply oracular according to his liking. "But look
here, how are we to get back Donald unless we split? Would it not be
all right to split just to get Donald back?"

Sambo Soulis waggled his head again. This time his master looked a
little more serious.

"I suppose you are right," he said pensively, "but if it would be
dasht-mean to split, we must just try to get him back ourselves--that
is, if the beasts have not cut his throat, as they said they would."




CHAPTER IX.

PUT TO THE QUESTION.


In the chaste retirement of his sick room the Field-Marshal had just
reached this conclusion, when he heard a noise in the hall. There was
a sound of the gruff unmirthful voices of grown-ups, a scuffling of
feet, a planting of whips and walking-sticks on the zinc-bottomed
hall-stand, and then, after a pause which meant drinks, heavy
footsteps in the passage which led to the hero's chamber.

Hugh John snatched up Sambo Soulis and thrust him deep beneath the
bedclothes, where he could readily push him over the end with his
toes, if it should chance to be "the doctor-beast" come to uncover him
and "fool with the bandages." I have said enough to show that the
General was not only frankly savage in sentiment, but resembled his
great imperial namesake in being grateful only when it suited him.

Before General Napoleon had his toes fairly settled over the back of
Sambo Soulis' neck, so as to be able to remove him out of harm's way
on any sudden alarm, the door opened and his father came in, ushering
two men, the first of whom came forward to the bedside in an easy,
kindly manner, and held out his hand.

"Do you know me?" he said, giving Hugh John's second sorest hand such
a squeeze that the wounded hero was glad it was not the very sorest
one.

"Yes," replied the hero promptly, "you are Sammy Carter's father. I
can jolly well lick----"

"Hugh John," interrupted his father severely, "remember what you are
saying to Mr. Davenant Carter."

"Well, anyway, I _can_ lick Sammy Carter till he's dumb-sick!"
muttered the General between his teeth, as he avoided the three pairs
of eyes that were turned upon him.

"Oh, let him say just what he likes!" said Mr. Davenant Carter
jovially. "Sammy is the better of being licked, if that is what the
boy was going to say. I sometimes try my hand at it myself with some
success."

The other man who had come in with Mr. Smith was a thick-set fellow of
middle height, with a curious air of being dressed up in somebody
else's clothes. Yet they fitted him very well. He wore on his face (in
addition to a slight moustache) an expression which somehow made Hugh
John think guiltily of all the orchards he had ever visited along
with Toady Lion and Sammy Carter's sister Cissy, who was "no end of a
nice girl" in Hugh John's estimation.

"This, Hugh," said his father, with a little wave of his hand, "is Mr.
Mant, the Chief Constable of the county. Mr. Carter and he have come
to ask you a few questions, which you will answer at once."

"I won't be dasht-mean!" muttered Napoleon Smith to himself.

"What's that?" ejaculated Mr. Smith, catching the echo of his son's
rumble of dissent.

"Only my leg that hurted," said the hypocritical hero of battles.

"Don't you think we should have the other children here?" said Mr.
Chief Constable Mant, speaking for the first time in a gruff,
move-on-there voice.

"Certainly," assented Mr. Smith, going to the door. "Janet!"

"Yes, sir!"

The answer came from immediately behind the door.

The Field-Marshal's brow darkened, or rather it would have done so if
there had been no white bandages over it. This is the correct
expression anyhow--though ordinary brows but seldom behave in this
manner.

"Prissy's all right," he thought to himself, "but if that little fool
Toady Lion----"

And he clenched his second sorest hand under the clothes, and kicked
Sambo Soulis to the foot of the bed in a way which augured but little
mercy to Sir Toady Lion if, after all his training, he should turn
out "dasht-mean" in the hour of trial.

Presently the other two children were pushed in at the door, Toady
Lion trying a bolt at the last moment, which Janet Sheepshanks easily
foiled by catching at the slack of his trousers behind, while Prissy
stood holding her hands primly as if in Sunday-school class. Both
afforded to the critical eye of Hugh John complete evidence that they
had only just escaped from the Greater Pain of the comb and soaped
flannel-cloth of Janet Sheepshanks. Prissy's curls were still wet and
smoothed out, and Toady Lion was trying in vain to rub the yellow soap
out of his eyes.

So at the headquarters of its general, the army of Windy Standard
formed up. Sir Toady Lion wished to get within supporting distance of
Prissy, and accordingly kept snuggling nearer all the time, so that he
could get a furtive hold of her skirts at awkward places in the
examination. This he could do the more easily that General
Field-Marshal Smith was prevented by the bandages over his right eye,
and also by the projecting edges of the pillow, from seeing Toady
Lion's left hand.

"Now, Priscilla," began her father, "tell Mr. Davenant Carter and Mr.
Mant what happened in the castle, and the names of any of the bad boys
who stole your pet lamb."

"Wasn't no lamb--Donald was a sheep, and he could fight," began Toady
Lion, without relevance, but with his usual eagerness to hear the
sound of his own piping voice. In his zeal he took a step forward and
so brought himself on the level of the eye of his general, who from
the pillow darted upon him a look so freezing that Sir Toady Lion
instantly fell back into the ranks, and clutched Prissy's skirt with
such energy as almost to stagger her severe deportment.

"Now," said the Chief Constable of Bordershire, "tell me what were the
names of the assailants."

He was listening to the tale as told by Prissy with his note-book
ready in his hand, occasionally biting at the butt of the pencil, and
anon wetting the lead in his mouth, under the mistaken idea that by so
doing he improved its writing qualities.

"I think," began Prissy, "that they were----"

"_A-chew!_" came from the bed and from under the bandages with a
sudden burst of sound. Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith had sneezed. That
was all.

But Prissy started. She knew what it meant. It was the well-known
signal not to commit herself under examination.

Her father looked round at the open windows.

"Are you catching cold with the draught, Hugh John?" he asked kindly.

"I think I have a little cold," said the wily General, who did not
wish all the windows to be promptly shut.

"Don't know all their names, but the one that hurted me was----" began
Toady Lion.

But who the villain was will never be known, for at that moment the
bedclothes became violently disturbed immediately in front of Sir
Toady Lion's nose. A fearful black countenance nodded once at him and
disappeared.

"Black Sambo!" gasped Toady Lion, awed by the terrible appearance, and
falling back from the place where the wizard had so suddenly appeared.

"What did I understand you to say, little boy?" said Mr. Mant, with
his pencil on his book.

"Ow--it was Black Sambo!" Toady Lion almost screamed. Mr. Mant gravely
noted the fact.

"What in the world does he mean?" asked Mr. Mant, casting his eyes
searchingly from Prissy to General Napoleon and back again.

"He means 'Black Sambo'!" said Prissy, devoting herself strictly to
facts, and leaving the Chief Constable to his proper business of
interpreting them.

"What is his other name?" said Mr. Mant.

"Soulis!" said General Smith from the bed.

The three gentlemen looked at each other, smiled, and shook their
heads.

"What did I tell you?" said Mr. Davenant Carter. "Try as I will, I
cannot get the simplest thing out of my Sammy and Cissy if they don't
choose to tell."

Nevertheless Mr. Smith, being a sanguine man and with little
experience of children, tried again.

"There is no black boy in the neighbourhood," said Mr. Smith severely;
"now tell the truth, children--at once, when I bid you!"

He uttered the last words in a loud and commanding tone.

"Us is telling the troof, father dear," said Toady Lion, in the
"coaxy-woaxy" voice which he used when he wanted marmalade from Janet
or a ride on the saddle from Mr. Picton Smith.

"Perhaps the boy had blackened his face to deceive the eye," suggested
Mr. Mant, with the air of one familiar from infancy with the tricks
and devices of the evil-minded of all ages.

"Was the ringleader's face blackened?--Answer at once!" said Mr. Smith
sternly.

The General extracted his bruised and battered right hand from under
the clothes and looked at it.

"I think so," he said, "leastways some has come off on my knuckles!"

Mr. Davenant Carter burst into a peal of jovial mirth.

"Didn't I tell you?--It isn't a bit of use badgering children when
they don't want to tell. Let's go over to the castle."

And with that the three gentlemen went out, while Napoleon Smith,
Prissy, and Sir Toady Lion were left alone.

The General beckoned them to his bedside with his nose--quite an easy
thing to do if you have the right kind of nose, which Hugh John had.

"Now look here," he said, "if you'd told, I'd have jolly well
flattened you when I got up. 'Tisn't our business to tell p'leecemen
things."

"That wasn't a p'leeceman," said Sir Toady Lion, "hadn't no shiny
buttons."

"That's the worst kind," said the General in a low, hissing whisper;
"all the same you stood to it like bricks, and now I'm going to get
well and begin on the campaign at once."

"Don't you be greedy-teeth and eat it all yourself!" interjected
Toady Lion, who thought that the campaign was something to eat, and
that it sounded good.

"What are you going to do?" said Prissy, who had a great belief in the
executive ability of her brother.

"I know their secret hold," said General-Field-Marshal Smith grandly,
"and in the hour of their fancied security we will fall upon them
and----"

"And what?" gasped Prissy and Toady Lion together, awaiting the
revelation of the horror.

"Destroy them!" said General Smith, in a tone which was felt by all
parties to be final.

He laid himself back on his pillow and motioned them haughtily away.
Prissy and Sir Toady Lion retreated on tiptoe, lest Janet should catch
them and send them to the parlour--Prissy to read her chapter, and her
brother along with her to keep him out of mischief.

And so the great soldier was left to his meditations in the darkened
hospital chamber.




CHAPTER X.

A SCOUTING ADVENTURE.


General Smith, having now partially recovered, was mustering his
forces and arranging his plans of campaign. He had spoken no hasty
word when he boasted that he knew the secret haunt of the robbers.
For, some time before, during a brief but glorious career as a pirate,
he had been brought into connection with Nipper Donnan, the strongest
butcher's boy of the town, and the ringleader in all mischief,
together with Joe Craig, Nosie Cuthbertson, and Billy M'Robert, his
ready followers.

Hugh John had once been a member of the Comanche Cowboys, as Nipper
Donnan's band was styled; but a disagreement about the objects of
attack had hastened a rupture, and the affair of the castle was but
the last act in a hostility long latent. In fact the war was always
simmering, and was ready to boil over on the slightest provocation.
For when Hugh John found that his father's orchards, his father's
covers and hencoops were to be the chief prey (being safer than the
farmers' yards, where there were big dogs always loose, and the town
streets, where "bobbies" mostly congregated), he struck. He reflected
that one day all these things would belong to himself. He would share
with Prissy and Sir Toady Lion, of course; but still mainly they would
belong to him. Why then plunder them now? The argument was utilitarian
but sufficient.

Though he did not mention the fact to Prissy or Sir Toady Lion, Hugh
John was perfectly well acquainted with the leaders in the fray at the
castle. He knew also that there were motives for the enmity of the
Comanche Cowboys other and deeper than the town rights to the
possession of the Castle of Windy Standard.

It was night when Hugh John cautiously pushed up the sash of his
window and looked out. A few stars were high up aloft wandering
through the grey-blue fields of the summer night, as it were
listlessly and with their hands in their pockets. A corn-crake cried
in the meadow down below, steadily, remorselessly, like the aching of
a tooth. A white owl passed the window with an almost noiseless whiff
of fluffy feathers. Hugh John sniffed the cool pungent night smell of
the dew on the near wet leaves and the distant mown grass. It always
went to his head a little, and was the only thing which made him
regret that he was to be a soldier. Whenever he smelt it, he wanted to
be an explorer of far-off lands, or an honest poacher--even a
gamekeeper might do, in case the other vocations proved unattainable.

Hugh John got out of the window slowly, leaving Sir Toady Lion asleep
and the door into Prissy's room wide open. He dropped easily and
lightly upon the roof of the wash-house, and, steadying himself upon
the tiles, he slid down till he heard Caesar, the black Newfoundland,
stir in his kennel. Then he called him softly, so that he might not
bark. He could not take him with him to-night, for though Caesar was
little more than a puppy his step was like that of a cow, and when
released he went blundering end on through the woods like a festive
avalanche. Hugh John's father, for reasons of his own, persisted in
calling him "The Potwalloping Elephant."

So, having assured himself that Caesar would not bark, the boy dropped
to the ground, taking the roof of the dog-kennel on the way. Caesar
stirred, rolled himself round, and came out breathing hard, and
thump-thumping Hugh John's legs with his thick tail, with distinctly
audible blows.

Then when he understood that he was not to be taken, he sat down at
the extremity of his chain and regarded his master wistfully through
the gloom with his head upon one side; and as Hugh John took his way
down the avenue, Caesar moaned a little, intoning his sense of injury
and disappointment as the parson does a litany.

At the first turn of the road Hugh John had just time to dart aside
into the green, acrid-scented, leathery-leaved shrubbery, where he lay
crouched with his hands on his knees and his head thrust forward,
while Tom the keeper went slowly by with his arm about Jane
Housemaid's waist.

[Illustration: "WAIT TILL THE NEXT TIME YOU WON'T LEND ME THE FERRET,
TOM CANNON! O-HO, JANE HOUSEMAID, WILL YOU TELL MY FATHER THE NEXT
TIME I TAKE YOUR DUST SCOOP?"]

"Aha!" chuckled Hugh John; "wait till the next time you won't lend me
the ferret, Tom Cannon! O-ho, Jane Housemaid, will you tell my father
the next time I take your dust scoop out to the sand-hole to help dig
trenches? I think not!"

And Hugh John hugged himself in his pleasure at having a new weapon
so admirably double-barrelled. He looked upon the follies of love, as
manifested in the servants' hall and upon the outskirts of the
village, as so much excellent material by which a wise man would not
fail to profit. Janet Sheepshanks was very severe on such
delinquencies, and his father--well, Hugh John felt that Tom Cannon
would not wish to appear before his master in such a connection. He
had a vague remembrance of a certain look he had once seen on his
father's face when Allan Chestney, the head-keeper, came out from Mr.
Picton Smith's workroom with these words ringing in his ear, "Now,
sir, you will do as I tell you, or I will give you a character--_but_,
such a character as you will carry through the world with you, and
which will be buried with you when you die."

Allan was now married to Jemima, who had once been cook at the house
of Windy Standard. Hugh John went over to their cottage often to eat
her delicious cakes; and when Allan came in from the woods, his wife
ordered him to take off his dirty boots before he entered her clean
kitchen. Then Allan Chestney would re-enter and play submissively and
furtively with Patty Pans, their two-year-old child, shifting his
chair obediently whenever Cook Jemima told him. But all the same, Hugh
John felt dimly that these things would not have happened, save for
the look on his father's face when Allan Chestney went in to see him
that day in the grim pine-boarded workroom.

So, much lightened in his mind by his discovery, Hugh John took his
way down the avenue. At the foot of it, and before he came to the
locked white gate and the cottage of Betty, he turned aside through a
copse, over a little green patch of sward on which his feet slid
smooth as velvet. A hare sat on the edge of this, with her fore-feet
in the air. She was for the moment so astonished at Hugh John's
appearance that it was an appreciable period of time before she
turned, and with a quick, sidelong rush disappeared into the wood. He
could hear the soughing rush of the river below him, which took
different keys according to the thickness of the tree copses which
were folded about it; now singing gaily through the thin birches and
rowans; anon humming more hoarsely through the alders; again rustling
and whispering mysteriously through the grey shivery poplars; and,
last of all, coming up, dull and sullen, through the heavy oak woods,
whose broad leaves cover all noises underneath them as a blanket
muffles speech.

Hugh John skirted the river till he came to the stepping-stones, which
he crossed with easy confidence. He knew them--high, low, Jack, and
game, like the roofs of his father's outhouses. He could just as
easily have gone across blindfold.

Then he made his way over the wide, yellowish-grey spaces of the
castle island, avoiding the copses of willow and dwarf birch, and the
sandy-bottomed "bunkers," which ever and anon gleamed up before him
like big tawny eyes out of the dusky grey-green of the short grass.
After a little the walls of the old castle rose grimly before him, and
he could hear the starlings scolding one another sleepily high up in
the crevices. A black-cap piped wistfully among the sedges of the
watermarsh. Hugh John had often heard that the ruin was haunted, and
certainly he always held his breath as he passed it. But now he was on
duty, and, if need had been, he would that night have descended to the
deepest dungeon, and faced a full Banquo-board of blood-boltered
ghosts.




CHAPTER XI.

ENEMY'S COUNTRY.


He presently came to the wooden bridge and crossed it. He was now on
the outskirts of the town, and in enemy's country. So, more from
etiquette than precaution, he took the shelter of a wall, glided
through a plantation, among the withy roots of which his foot
presently caught in a brass "grin," or rabbit's snare. Hugh John
grubbed it up gratefully and pocketed it. He had no objections
whatever to spoiling the Egyptians.

He was now in butcher Donnan's pastures, where many fore-doomed sheep,
in all the bliss of ignorance, waited their turns to be made into
mutton. Very anxiously Hugh John scrutinised each one. He wandered
round and round till he had made certain that Donald was not there.

At the foot of the pasture were certain black-pitched wooden sheds set
in a square, with a little yard like a church pew in the midst.
Somewhere here, he knew, slept Donnan's slaughterman, and it was
possible that in this place Donald might be held in captivity.

Now it was an accomplishment of our hero's that he could bleat like
any kind of sheep--except perhaps an old tup, for which his voice was
as yet too shrill. In happy, idle days he had elaborated a code of
signals with Donald, and was well accustomed to communicating with him
from his bedroom window. So now he crouched in the dusk of the hedge,
and said "Maa-aaa!" in a tone of reproach.

Instantly a little answering bleat came from the black sheds, a sound
which made Hugh's heart beat faster. Still he could not be quite sure.
He therefore bleated again more pleadingly, and again there came back
the answer, choked and feeble indeed, but quite obviously the voice of
his own dear Donald. Hugh John cast prudence to the winds. He raced
round and climbed the bars into the enclosure, calling loudly,
"Donald! Donald!"

But hardly had his feet touched the ground when a couple of dogs flew
at him from the corner of the yard, and he had scarcely time to get on
the top of a stone wall before they were clamouring and yelping
beneath him. Hugh John crouched on his "hunkers" (as he called the
posture in which one sits on a wall when hostile dogs are leaping
below), and seizing a large coping-stone he dropped it as heavily as
he could on the head of the nearer and more dangerous. A howl most
lamentable immediately followed. Then a man's voice cried, "Down,
Towser! What's the matter, Grip? Sic' them! Good dogs!"

It was the voice of the slaughterman, roused from his slumbers, and in
fear of tramps or other midnight marauders upon his master's premises.

Hugh ran on all fours along the wall to the nearest point of the
woods, dropped over, and with a leaping, anxious heart sped in the
direction of home. He crossed the bridge in safety, but as he ran
across the island he could hear the dogs upon the trail and the
encouraging shouts of his pursuer. The black looming castle fell
swiftly behind him. Now he was at the stepping-stones, over which he
seemed to float rather than leap, so completely had fear added to his
usual strength wings of swiftness.

But at the farther side the dogs were close upon him. He was obliged
to climb a certain low tree, where he had often sat dangling his legs
and swinging in the branches while he allowed Prissy to read to him.

The dogs were soon underneath, and he could see them leaping upward
with snapping white teeth which gleamed unpleasantly through the
darkness. But their furious barking was promptly answered. Hugh John
could hear a heavy tread approaching among the dense foliage of the
trees. A dark form suddenly appeared in the glade and poised something
at its shoulder.--Flash! There came a deafening report, the thresh of
leaden drops, a howl of pain from the dogs, and both of them took
their way back towards the town with not a few bird shot in their
flanks.

Hugh John's heart stood still as the dark figure advanced. He feared
it might prove to be his father. Instead it was Tom Cannon, and the
brave scout on the tree heaved a sigh of relief.

"Who's up there?" cried the under-keeper gruffly; "come down this
moment and show yourself, you dirty poacher, or by Heaven I'll shoot
you sitting!"

"All right, Tom, I'm coming as fast as I can," said Hugh John,
beginning to clamber down.

"Heavens and earth, Master Hugh--what be you doing here? Whatever will
master say?"

"He won't say anything, for he won't know, Tom Cannon." said Hugh John
confidently.

"Oh yes, he will," said the keeper. "I won't have you bringing a pack
of dogs into my covers at twelve of the clock--blow me if I will!"

"Well, you won't tell my father, anyway!" said Hugh John calmly,
dusting himself as well as he could.

"And why not?" asked the keeper indignantly.

"'Cause if you do, I'll tell where I saw you kissing Jane Housemaid an
hour ago!"

Now this was at once a guess and an exaggeration. Hugh John had not
seen all this, but he felt rather than knew that the permitted arm
about Jane Housemaid's waist could have no other culmination. Also he
had a vague sense that this was the most irritating thing he could say
in the circumstances.

At any rate Tom Cannon fairly gasped with astonishment. A
double-jointed word slipped between his teeth, which sounded like
"Hang that boy!" At last his seething thoughts found utterance.

"You young imp of Satan--it ain't true, anyway."

"All right, you can tell my father that!" said Hugh John coolly,
feeling the strength of his position.

Tom Cannon was not much frightened for himself, but he did not wish to
get Jane Housemaid into any trouble, for, as he well knew, that young
woman had omitted to ask for leave of absence. So he only said, "All
right, it's none of my business if you wander over every acre, and
break your neck off every tree on the blame estate. But you'd better
be getting home before master comes out and catches you himself! Then
you'd eat strap, my lad!"

So having remade the peace, Tom escorted Hugh John back to the dog
kennel with great good nature, and even gave him a leg up to the roof
above the palace of Caesar.

Hugh John paused as he put one foot into the bedroom, heavy and yet
homelike with the night smell of a sleeping house. Toady Lion had
fallen out of bed and lay, still with his blanket wrapped round him
like a martial cloak, half under his cot and half on the floor. But
this he did every other night. Prissy was breathing quietly in the
next room. All was safe.

Hugh John called softly down, "Tom, Tom!"

"What now?" returned the keeper, who had been spying along the top
windows to distinguish a certain one dear to his heart.

"I say, Tom--I'll tell Jane Housemaid to-morrow that you're a proper
brick."

"Thank'ee, sir!" said Tom, saluting gravely and turning off across the
lawn towards the "bothy," where among the pine woods he kept his
owl-haunted bachelor quarters.




CHAPTER XII.

MOBILISATION.


Generally speaking, Hugh John despised Sammy Carter--first, because he
could lick him with one hand, and, secondly, because Sammy Carter was
a clever boy and could discover ways of getting even without licking
him. Clever boys are all cheeky and need hammering. Besides, Sammy
Carter was in love with Prissy, and every one knew what that meant.
But then Sammy Carter had a sister, Cissy by name, and she was quite a
different row of beans.

Furthermore, Sammy Carter read books--a degrading pursuit, unless they
had to do with soldiering, and especially with the wars of Napoleon,
Hugh John's great ancestor. In addition, Sammy knew every date that
was, and would put you right in a minute if you said that Bannockburn
happened after Waterloo, or any little thing like that. A disposition
so perverse as this could only be cured with a wicket or with Hugh
John's foot, and our hero frequently applied both corrections.

But Cissy Carter--ah! now there was a girl if you like. She never
troubled about such things. She could not run so fast as Prissy, but
then she had a perfect colt's mane of hair, black and glossy, which
flew out behind her when she did. Moreover, she habitually did what
Hugh John told her, and burned much incense at his shrine, so that
modest youth approved of her. It was of her he first thought when he
set about organising his army for the assault upon the Black Sheds,
where, like Hofer at Mantua, the gallant Donald lay in chains.

But it was written in the chronicles of Oaklands that Cissy Carter
could not be allowed over the river without Sammy, so Sammy would have
to be permitted to join too. Hugh John resolved that he would keep his
eye very sharply upon Prissy and Sammy Carter, for the abandoned pair
had been known to compose poetry in the heat of an engagement, and
even to read their compositions to one another on the sly. For this
misdemeanour Prissy would certainly have been court-martialled, only
that her superior officer could not catch her at the time. But the
wicked did not wholly escape, for Hugh John tugged her hair afterwards
till she cried; whereat Janet Sheepshanks, coming suddenly upon him
and cornering him, spanked him till _he_ cried. He cried solely as a
measure of military necessity, because it was the readiest way of
getting Janet to stop, and also because that day Janet wore a new pair
of slippers, with heels upon which Hugh John had not been counting. So
he cried till he got out of Janet's reach, when he put out his tongue
at her and said, "Hum-m! Thought you hurt, didn't you? Well, it just
didn't a bit!"

And Sir Toady Lion, who was feeding his second-best wooden horses with
wild sand-oats gathered green, remarked, "When I have childwens I sail
beat them wif a big boot and tackets in the heel."

Which voiced with great precision Janet Sheepshanks' mood at that
moment.

The army of Windy Standard, then, when fully mustered, consisted of
General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith, Commander-in-Chief and
regimental Sergeant-Major (also, on occasions of parade, Big
Big-Drummer); Adjutant-General Cissy Carter, promoted to her present
high position for always agreeing with her superior officer--a safe
rule in military politics; Commissariat-Sergeant Sir Toady Lion, who
declined any other post than the care of the provisions, and had to be
conciliated; together with Privates Sammy Carter and Prissy Smith.
Sammy Carter had formerly been Adjutant, because he had a pony, but
gallantly resigned in order to be of the same rank as Prissy, who was
the sole member of the force wholly without military ambition.

At the imposing review which was held on the plains of Windy
Standard, the Commander-in-Chief insisted on carrying the blue banner
himself, as well as the big-big drum, till Sammy Carter, who had not
yet resigned, offered him his pony to ride upon. This he did with
guile and malice aforethought, for on the drum being elevated in front
of the mounted officer, Polo promptly ran away, and deposited
General-Field-Marshal Smith in the horse pond.

[Illustration: "DEPOSITED GENERAL-FIELD-MARSHAL SMITH IN THE HORSE
POND."]

But this force, though officered with consummate ability, was
manifestly insufficient for the attack upon the Black Sheds. This was
well shown by Sammy Carter, who also pointed out that the armies of
all ages had never been exclusively composed of those of noble birth.
There were, for example, at Bannockburn, the knights, the esquires,
the sturdy yeomanry, the spearmen, the bowmen, and the camp-followers.
He advised that the stable boys, Mike and Peter, should be approached.

Now the head stable boy, Mike O'Donelly by name, was a scion of the
noblest Bourbon race. His father was an exile, who spoke the language
with a strong foreign accent, and drove a fish cart--which also had a
pronounced accent, reputed deadly up to fifty yards with a favourable
wind.

"Foine frish hirrings--foive for sixpince!" was the way he said it.
This proved to demonstration that he came from a far land, and was the
descendant of kings. When taxed directly with being the heir to a
crown, he did not deny it, but said, "Yus, Masther Smith, wanst I had
a crown, but I lost it. 'Twas the Red Lion, bad scran to ut, that did
the deed!"

Now this was evidently only a picturesque and regal way of referring
to the bloody revolution by which King Michael O'Donowitch had been
dethroned and reduced to driving a fish-cart--the old, old story,
doubtless, of royal license and popular ingratitude. But there was no
such romantic mystery about Peter Greg. He was simply junior stable
boy, and his father was general utility man--or, as it was more
generally called, "odd man," about the estate of Windy Standard. Peter
occupied most of his time in keeping one eye on his work and the other
on his father, who, on general utility principles, "welted" him every
time that he caught him. This exercise, and his other occupation of
perpetual fisticuffs with Prince Mike O'Donelly, had so developed his
muscles and trained his mind, that he could lick any other two boys of
his size in the parish. He said so himself, and he usually had at
least one black eye to show for it. So no one contradicted him, and,
indeed, who had a better right to know?

Prince Michael O'Donowitch (the improvement in style was Sammy
Carter's) put the matter differently. He said, "I can lick Peter Greg
till he can't stand" ("shtand" was how the royal exile pronounced it),
"but Peter an' me can knock the stuffin' out of any half-dozen
spalpeens in this dirthy counthry."

Both Mike and Peter received commissions in the army at the same
moment. The ceremony took place at the foot of the great hay mow at
the back of the stable yard. In view of his noble ancestry, Prince
Michael O'Donowitch was made a major-general, and Peter a lieutenant
of marines. The newly appointed officers instantly clinched, fell
headlong, rolled over and over one another, pommelled each other's
heads, bit, scratched, and kicked till the hay and straw flew in all
directions.

When the dust finally cleared away, Peter was found sitting astride of
Prince Michael, and shouting, "Are you the general-major, or am I?"

Then when they had risen to their feet and dusted themselves, it was
found that the distinguished officers had exchanged commissions, and
that Peter Greg had become major-general, while Prince Michael
O'Donowitch was lieutenant of marines, with a new and promising black
eye!

[Illustration: "GENERALS OF DIVISION, EQUAL IN RANK."]

But at the first drill, upon General Peter issuing some complicated
order, such as "Attention! eyes right!" Lieutenant O'Donowitch
remarked, "Me eyes is as roight as yours, ye dirthy baste av a
Scotchy!" Whereupon, as the result of another appeal to arms, the
former judgment was reversed, and Prince Michael regained his
commission at the price of another black eye. Indeed he would have had
three, but for the fact that the number of his eyes was somewhat
strictly limited to two.

Now it was felt by all parties that in a well-disciplined army such
transitions were altogether too sudden, and so a compromise was
suggested--as usual by Sammy Carter. Prince Michael and Peter Greg
were both made generals of division, equal in rank, under
Field-Marshal Smith. The division commanded by General Peter was
composed of Cissy and Sir Toady Lion. The command of this first
division proved, however, to be purely nominal, for Cissy was much too
intimate with the Commander-in-Chief to be ordered about, and as for
Toady Lion he was so high minded and irresponsible that he quite
declined to obey anybody whatsoever. Still, the title was the thing,
and "the division of General Peter Greg" sounded very well.

The other division was much more subordinate. Prissy and Sammy Carter
were the only genuine privates, and they were quite ready to be
commanded by General Mike, Prissy upon conscientious non-resistance
principles, and Sammy with a somewhat humorous aside to his
fellow-soldier that it wouldn't be very bad, because Mike's father
(the royal fish-hawker) lived on Sammy's ancestral domain, and owed
money to Mr. Davenant Carter.

Thus even the iron discipline of a British army is tempered to the
sacred property holder.

The immediate advance of the army of Windy Standard upon the Black
Sheds was only hindered by a somewhat serious indisposition which
suddenly attacked the Commander-in-Chief. The facts were these.

Attached to the castle, but lying between it and the stepping-stones
on the steep side of the hill, was an ancient enclosed orchard. It had
doubtless been the original garden of the fortress, but the trees had
gone back to their primitive "crabbiness" (as Hugh John put it), and
in consequence the children were forbidden to eat any of the fruit--an
order which might just as well not have been issued. But on a day it
was reported to Janet Sheepshanks that Prissy and Hugh John were in
the crab orchard. On tip-toe she stole down to catch them. She caught
Hugh John. Prissy was up in one of the oldest and leafiest trees, and
Hugh John, as in honour bound, persistently made signals in another
direction to distract attention, as he was being hauled off to condign
punishment.

He had an hour to wait in the study for his father, who was away at
the county town. During this time Hugh John suffered strange qualms,
not of apprehension, which presently issued in yet keener and more
definitely located agony. At last Mr. Picton Smith entered.

"Well, sir, and what is this I hear?" he said severely, throwing down
his riding-whip on the couch as if he meant to pick it up again soon.

Hugh John was silent. He saw that his father knew all there was to
know about his evil doings from Janet Sheepshanks, and he was far too
wise to plead guilty.

"Did I not tell you not to go to the orchard?"

Hugh John hung his head, and made a slight grimace at the pattern on
the carpet, as a severer pang than any that had gone before assailed
him.

"Now, look here, sir," said his father, shaking his finger at him in a
solemnising manner, "If ever I catch you again in that orchard,
I'll--I'll give you as sound a thrashing, sir, as ever you got in your
life."

Hugh John rubbed his hand across his body just above the second lowest
button of his jacket.

"Oh, father," he said plaintively, "I wish dreadfully that you had
caught me before the last time I was in the orchard."

The treatment with pills and rhubarb which followed considerably
retarded the operations of the army of Windy Standard. It was not the
first time that the stomach of a commander-in-chief has had an
appreciable effect on the conduct of a campaign.




CHAPTER XIII.

THE ARMY OF WINDY STANDARD.


At last, however, all was ready, in the historical phrase of Napoleon
the Little, "to the last gaiter-button."

It was the intention of the Commander-in-Chief to attack the citadel
of the enemy with banners flying, and after due notice. He had been
practising for days upon his three-key bugle in order to give the call
of Childe Roland. But Private Sammy Carter, who was always sticking
his oar in, put him upon wiser lines, and (what is more) did it so
quietly and suggestively that General Napoleon was soon convinced that
Sammy's plan was his own, and on the second day boasted of its merits
to its original begetter, who did not even smile. The like has
happened in greater armies with generals as distinguished.

Sammy Carter advised that the assault should be delivered between
eight and nine in the morning, for the very good reasons that at that
hour both the butcher's apprentice, Tommy Pratt, and the slaughterman
would be busy delivering the forenoon orders, while the butcher's son,
Nipper Donnan, would be at school, and the Black Sheds consequently
entirely deserted.

At first Hugh John rebelled, and asserted that this was not a
sportsmanlike mode of proceeding, but Sammy Carter, who always knew
more about everything than was good for anybody, overwhelmed his chief
with examples of strategies and surprises from the military history of
thirty centuries.

"Besides," said he, somewhat pertinently, "let's get Donald back
first, and then we can be chivalrous all you want. Perhaps they are
keeping him to fatten him up for the Odd Coons' Bank Holiday Feast."

This, as the wily Sammy knew, was calculated to stir up the wrath of
his general more than anything else he could say. For at the annual
Bean Feast of the Honourable Company of Odd Coons, a benefit secret
society of convivial habits, a sheep was annually roasted whole. It
said an ox on the programme, but the actual result, curiously enough,
was mutton and not beef.

"We attack to-morrow at daybreak," said Field-Marshal Smith grandly,
as soon as Sammy Carter had finished speaking.

This, however, had subsequently to be modified to nine o'clock, to
suit the breakfast hour of the Carters. Moreover Saturday was
substituted for Tuesday, both because Cissy and Sammy could most
easily "shirk" their governess on that day, and because Mr. Picton
Smith was known to be going up to London by the night train on Friday.

On such trivial circumstances do great events depend.

When the army was finally mustered for the assault, its armament was
found to be somewhat varied, though generally efficient. But then even
in larger armies the weapons of the different arms of the service are
far from uniform. There are, for example, rifles and bayonets for the
Line, lances for the Light Horse, carbines, sabres, and army biscuits,
all deadly after their kind.

So it was in the campaigning outfit of the forces of Windy Standard.
The historian can only hint at this equipment, so strange were the
various kits. The Commander-in-Chief wished to insist on a red sash
and a long cut-and-thrust sword, with (if possible) a kettle-drum. But
this was found impracticable as a general order. For not only did the
two divisional commanders decline to submit to the sash, but there
were not enough kettle-drums intact to go more than half round.

So General Smith was the only soldier who carried a real sword. He had
also a pistol, which, however, obstinately refused to go off, but
formed a valuable weapon when held by the barrel. Cissy was furnished
with a pike, constructed by Prince Michael's father, the dethroned
monarch of O'Donowitch-dom, out of a leister or fish-spear--which,
strangely enough, he had carried away with him from his palace at the
time of his exile. This constituted a really formidable armament,
being at least five feet long, and so sharp that if you ran very hard
against a soft wooden door with it, it made a mark which you could see
quite a yard off in a good light.

Prissy had a carpet-broom with a long handle, which at a distance
looked like a gun, and as Prissy meant to do all her fighting at a
distance this was quite sufficient. In addition she had three pieces
of twine to tie up her dress, so that she would be ready to run away
untrammelled by flapping skirts. Sir Toady Lion was equipped for war
with a thimble, three sticky bull's-eyes, the haft of a knife (but no
blade), a dog-whistle, and a go-cart with one shaft, all of which
proved exceedingly useful.

The two Generals of Division were attired in neat stable clothes with
buttoned leggings, and put their trust in a pair of "catties"
(otherwise known as catapults), two stout shillelahs, the national
batons of the exiled prince, manufactured by himself; and, most
valuable of all, a set a-piece of horny knuckles, which they had kept
in constant practice against each other all through the piping times
of peace. Both Mike and Peter knowingly chewed straws in opposite
corners of their mouths.

The forces on the other side were quite unknown, both as to number and
quality. Hugh John maintained that there were at least twenty, and
Toady Lion stoutly proclaimed that there were a million thousand, and
that he had seen and counted them every one. But a stricter census,
instituted upon evidence led by Private Sammy Carter, could not get
beyond half-a-dozen. So that the disproportion was not so great as
might have been supposed. Still the siege of the Sheds was felt to be
of the nature of a forlorn hope.

It was arranged that all who distinguished themselves for deeds of
valour were to receive the Victoria Cross, a decoration which had been
cut by Hugh John out of the tops of ginger-beer bottles with a cold
chisel. As soon, however, as Sir Toady Lion heard this, he sat down in
the dust of the roadside, and simply refused to budge till his
grievances were redressed.

"I wants Victowya Cyoss _now_!" he remarked, with his father's wrinkle
of determination between the eyes showing very plain, as it always did
when he wanted anything very much.

For when Toady Lion asked for a thing, like the person in the
advertisement, he saw that he got it.

In vain it was pointed out to him that this ill-advised action
constituted rank mutiny, and that he was liable to be arrested, tried
by court-martial, and ignominiously shot. Toady Lion knew all about
mutiny, and cared nothing about courts-martial. Besides, he had had
some experience, and he knew the value of "making oneself a nuisance"
in army matters.

Equally in vain was Sammy Carter's humorously false information that
he had better run, for here was Janet coming up the road with an awful
biggy stick.

"Don't care for Janet," reiterated Toady Lion. "I wants Victowya
Cyoss--I wants it _now!_"

So there upon the roadside, at the very outset of the campaign, Sir
Toady Lion was decorated with the much coveted "For Valour" cross.

And he would be a bold man who would say that he did not deserve it.




CHAPTER XIV.

THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK SHEDS.


This much being settled, the army of Windy Standard advanced upon the
enemy's entrenchments.

Prissy was the only soldier in the force with any religious
convictions of a practical kind. On this occasion she actually wanted
to send a mission to the foe with an offer of peace, on condition of
their giving up Donald to his rightful owners. She instanced as an
example of the kind of thing she meant, the verses about turning the
other cheek. But General Napoleon had his answer ready.

"Well," he said, "that's all right. That's in the Bible, so I s'pose
you have got to believe it. But I was looking at it last Sunday in
sermon time, and it doesn't say what you are to do _after_ you turn
the other cheek. So yesterday I tried it on Tommy Pratt to see how it
worked, and he hit me on the other cheek like winking, and made my
eyes water. So then I took off my coat, and, Jove!--didn't I just give
him Billy-O! Texts aren't so bad. They are mostly all right, if you
only read on a bit!"

"But," said Prissy, "perhaps you forgot that a soft answer turneth
away wrath?"

"Don't, nother," contradicted Sir Toady Lion, whose pronunciation of
"wrath" and "horse" was identical, and who persistently misunderstood
the Scriptural statement which Janet Sheepshanks had once made him
learn without explanation. "Tried soft answer on big horse in the
farm-yard, yesterday, and he didn't turn away a little bit, but comed
right on, and tried to eat me _all_ up!"

Toady Lion always had at least one word in italics in each sentence.

Prissy looked towards her ally and fellow-private for assistance.

"Love your----" suggested Sammy, giving her a new cue. Prissy thanked
him with a look.

"Well," she said, "at least you won't deny that it says in the New
Testament that you are to love your enemies!"

"I don't yike the New Test'ment," commented Toady Lion in his shrill
high pipe, which cuts through all other conversation as easily as a
sharp knife cleaves a bar of soap; "ain't never nobody killed dead in
the New Test'ment!"

"Hush, Arthur George," said Prissy in a shocked voice, "you must not
speak like that about the New Testament. It says 'Love your enemies!'
'Do good to them that hate you!' Now then!"

Hugh John turned away with a disgusted look on his face.

"Oh," he said, "of course, if you were to go on like that, there would
never be any soldiers, nor bloody wars, nor nothing nice!"

Which of course would be absurd.

       *       *       *       *       *

During this discussion the two Generals of Division had been wholly
silent. To them the New Testament was considerably outside the sphere
of practical politics. Peter Greg indeed had one which he had got from
his mother on his birthday with his name on the first page; and Mike,
who was of the contrary persuasion as to the advisability of
circulating the Written Word in the vulgar tongue, could always
provoke a fight by threatening to burn it, to which Peter Greg
invariably replied by a hasty and ungenerous expression of hope as to
the future welfare of the head of the Catholic religion.

But all this was purely academical discussion. Neither of them knew
nor cared one jot about the matter. Prissy alone was genuinely
distressed, and so affected was she that two big tears of woe trickled
down her cheeks. These she wiped off with her pinafore, turning away
her eyes so that Hugh John might not see them. There was, however, no
great danger of this, for that warrior preoccupied himself with
shouting "Right-left, Right-left," as if he were materially assisting
the success of the expedition by doing so.

At the entrance to the pastures tenanted by butcher Donnan, the army
divided into its two divisions under their several commanders. The
Commander-in-Chief placed himself between the wings as a central
division all by himself. It was Peter Greg who first reached the door,
and with his stout cudgel knocked off the padlock. He had already
entered in triumph, and was about to be followed by his soldiery, when
a loud shout was heard from the edge of the park.

"Here they are--go at them! Give them fits, boys! We'll learn them to
come sneaking into our field."

And over the stone dikes, from the direction of the town of Edam, came
an overpowering force of the enemy led by Nipper Donnan. They seemed
to arrive from all parts at once, and with sticks and stones they
advanced upon the slender array of the forces of Windy Standard. Their
rude language, their threatening gestures, and their loud shouts
intimidated but did not daunt the assailants. Field-Marshal Napoleon
Smith called on his men to do or die; and everyone resolved that that
was just what they were there for--all except Prissy, who promptly
pulled up her skirts and went down the meadow towards the
stepping-stones like a jenny-spinner driven by the wind, and Sir Toady
Lion, who, finding an opening in the hedge about his size in holes,
crept quietly through and was immediately followed by Caesar, the
"potwalloping" Newfoundland pup.

The struggle which raged around those who remained staunch to the
colours was grim and deadly. General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith
threw himself into the thickest of the fray, and the cry, "A Smith for
Merry England," alternated with the ringing "Scotland for ever!" which
had so often carried terror into the hearts of the foe. Prince Michael
O'Donowitch performed prodigies of valour, and personally "downed"
three of the enemy with his national weapon. Peter Greg fought a
pitched battle with Nipper Donnan, in which double-jointed words were
as freely used as tightly clenched fists. Cissy Carter "progged" at
least half-a-dozen of the enemy with her pike, before it was wrested
from her by the united efforts of several town lads who were not going
to stand being punched by a girl. Sammy Carter stood well out of the
heady fray, and contented himself with stinging up the enemy with his
vengeful catapult till they howled again.

[Illustration: "THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK SHEDS."]

But the struggle of the many against the few, the strong against the
weak, could only end in one way. In ten minutes the forces of law and
disorder were scattered to the four quarters of heaven, and the
standard that had streamed so rarely on the braes of Edam was in the
hands of the exulting foe.

Prince Michael was wounded on the nose to the effusion of blood,
General Peter Greg was a fugitive with a price on his head, and, most
terrible of all--Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith was taken prisoner.

       *       *       *       *       *

But Sir Toady Lion was neither among the slain, nor yet among the
wounded or the captives. What then of Toady Lion?




CHAPTER XV.

TOADY LION PLAYS A FIRST LONE HAND.


Sir Toady Lion had played a lone hand.

We left him sitting behind the hedge, secure as the gods above the
turmoil of battle. But he could not be content to stay there. He
thought of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, his great namesake and hero; and
though he wanted to do nothing rash, he was resolved to justify the
ginger-beer label Victoria Cross which he wore so proudly on his
breast. So he waited till the forces of the town had swept those of
Windy Standard from the field. He saw on the edge of the wood Hugh
John, resisting manfully to the death, and striking out in all
directions. But Toady Lion knew that he had no clear call to such very
active exertions.

Cautiously he returned through his hole in the hedge, and crawling
round the opposite side of the Black Sheds, he entered the door which
Peter Greg had forced with his cudgel, before he had been interrupted
by the arrival of the enemy. Toady Lion ran through a slippery byre in
which calves had been standing, and came to an inner division with a
low door and a causewayed floor like a pig-pen. He opened this gate by
kicking up the hasp with the toe of his boot, and found himself at
once in the inmost sanctuary.

And there, right before him, with a calf's halter of rope about his
neck, all healthy and alive, was Donald, his own dear, black, pet lamb
Donald, who gave a little bleat of pure delight upon seeing him, and
pulled vigorously at the rope to get loose.

"Quiet now, Donald! Or they will come back. Stand still, 'oo horrid
little beast 'oo, till I get the rope off!"

And so, easing the noose gradually, Toady Lion slipped it over
Donald's head and he was free.

Then, very cautiously, his deliverer put his head round the door to
see that the coast was clear. Not a soul was to be seen anywhere on
the pastures; so Toady Lion slid out and made for the gap in the
hedge, sure that Donald would follow him. Donald did follow, but, as
luck would have it, no sooner was he through than Caesar, who had been
scraping for imaginary rabbits at the other side of the field, came
barking and rushing about over the grass like a runaway traction
engine.

Now Donald hated big dogs--they rugged and tugged his wool so; as soon
therefore as he saw Caesar he took down the lea towards the island as
hard as he could go. He thundered across the wooden bridge, breaking
through the fleeing forces of Windy Standard, which were scattered
athwart the castle island. He sprinted over the short turf by the
orchard, Caesar lying off thirty yards on his flank. At the shallows by
the stepping-stones Donald sheepfully took the water, and was not long
in swimming to the other side, the Edam being hardly deep enough
anywhere at this point to take him off his feet. In a minute more he
was delightedly nuzzling his wet nose into the hand of Janet
Sheepshanks, on the terrace of Windy Standard House.

"Wi beast, whaur hae ye come frae?--I declare I am _that_ glad to see
ye!"

But had she known the price which had been paid for Donald's liberty,
her rejoicing would quickly have given place to sorrow. It was
mid-afternoon on the day of battle and defeat when Toady Lion
straggled home, so wet and dirty that he could only be slapped, bathed
and sent to bed--which, in the absence of his father, was felt to be
an utterly inadequate punishment.

Prissy had long ago fled home with a terrible tale of battle, murder,
and sudden death. But she knew nothing of her brother Hugh John,
though she had nerved herself to go back to the Black Sheds, suffering
grinding agonies of fear and apprehension the while, as also of
reproach for deserting him in his hour of need. Mike and Peter were
quietly at work in the stable, in momentary dread of being called upon
to give evidence.

The Carters, Sammy and Cissy, had run straight home, and were at that
moment undoubtedly smelling of arnica and slimy with vaseline.
But there was no trace of the Commander-in-Chief anywhere.
General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith had vanished from the face of the
earth.

[Illustration: "OH, THE BONNY LADDIE!"]

Tea-time came and went. He had been known to be absent from tea.
Supper-time arrived and overpassed, and then the whole house grew
anxious. Ten o'clock came, and in the clear northern twilight all the
household were scattered over the countryside seeking for him.
Midnight, and no Hugh John! Where could he be? Drowned in the Edam
Water--killed by a chance blow in the great battle--or simply hiding
from fear of punishment and afraid to venture home? It must have been
some stranger entirely unacquainted with General Napoleon Smith who
advocated the last explanation. The inmates of Windy Standard
cherished no such foolish hopes.

The sun rose soon after two on as glorious a summer morning as ever
shone upon the hills of the Border. As his beams overshot Brown
Gattonside to the east they fell on Janet Sheepshanks. Her decent
white cap was green-moulded with the moss of the woods; the drip of
waterside caves had grimed it, the cobwebs of murky outhouses
festooned it. Her abundant grey hair hung down in untended witch
locks. She had not shut an eye nor lain down all night.

Now she leaned her head on her hands and sobbed aloud.

"Oh, the bonny laddie! Whatever will I say to his faither when he
comes hame? His auldest son and the aipple o' his e'e! My certie, if
the ill-set loon were to come up the road the noo, I wad thresh the
very skin aff his banes! To think that he should bide awa' like this.
Oh, the dear, dear lamb that he is; and will thae auld e'en never mair
rest on his bonnie face? Cauld, cauld noo it looks up frae the bottom
o' some pool in the Edam Water!"

And Janet Sheepshanks, like one of the mothers in Ramah, lifted up her
voice and wept with the weeping which will not be comforted; for
oft-times bairns' play brings that which is not bairns' play to those
who love them.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE SMOUTCHY BOYS.


General Napoleon Smith had been taken captive by the Comanche Cowboys.
Now it is fair to say in this place that they also had their side of
the question. Their fathers were, in their own opinion, striving for
the ancient rights of the town against an interloping Smith. Why
should not they against the son of that Smith and his allies? The
denunciations of the Edam Town Council were only transformed into the
blows which rained down so freely upon Hugh John's bare and curly
head, as he stood at bay that Saturday morning in the corner of the
dike.

"Surrender!" cried Nipper Donnan, whose father had moved that the town
of Edam take the case up to the House of Lords.

"'A Smith dies but does not surrender'!" replied the son of the man
who had declared his intention of fighting the matter out though it
took his last copper.

In the calm atmosphere of the law-courts this was very well, and the
combatants stood about an equal chance; but not so when translated
into terms to suit the Black Sheds of Edam and the links of the castle
island.

So the many-headed swarmed over the wall from behind; they struck down
the last brave defender of privilege, and Hugh John Picton Smith was
borne away to captivity.

Now there are many tongues and many peoples on the face of the earth,
and doubtless the one Lord made them all. But there is one variety
which appears among all nations, and commentators disagree as to what
particular Power is responsible for his creation. He is the Smoutchy
Boy.

This universal product of the race is indeed the chief evidence that
we are lineally connected with the brutes that perish; for there is no
doubt that the Smoutchy Boy is a brute among brutes. He is at once
cruel and cowardly, boastful and shy, ready to strike a weaker, and
equally ready to cry out when a stronger strikes him. He is not
peculiar to any one class of society. He frequents the best
public-schools, and is responsible for the under-current of cruelty
which ever and anon rises to the surface there and supplies a month's
free copy to enterprising journals in want of a sensation for the dull
season. He makes some regiments of the service a terror. He
understands all about "hazing" in the navy. Happily, however, among
such large collections of human beings there is generally some
clear-eyed, upstanding, able-bodied, long-armed Other Product who, by
way of counterpoise, has been specially created to be the defender of
the oppressed, and the scourge of the Smoutchy Boy.

I have seen one such scatter a dozen Smoutchies, who were employed
after their kind in stoning to death a nestful of fluffy, gaping,
yellow-billed young blackbirds. I have heard the sound of his fists
striking most compactly and satisfactorily against Smoutchy flesh.
Also I know the jar with which a foot stops suddenly in mid-air, as
the Scourge pursues and kicks the fleeing Smoutchy--kicks him "for
keeps" too.

Yet for all this Smoutchy Boy is a man and a brother. His smoutchiness
generally passes off with the callowness of hobble-de-hoyhood. The
condition is indeed rather one for the doctor than for the Police
Court. It is pathological rather than criminal; for when the Smoutchy
is thrown for some time into the society of men of the world--drilled
for instance in barrack yards, licked and clouted into shape by the
regiment or the ship's crew, he sheds his smoutchiness from him like a
garment. It is on record that Smoutchies ere now have led forlorn
hopes, pierced Africa to its centre, navigated strange seas, and
trodden trackless Polar snows. The worst Smoutchy of my time, the
bully who, till the biceps and _tendo Achilles_ muscles hardened to
their office, made life at a certain school a terror and an agony,
afterwards sprang from a steamer in order to save the life of a man
who had fallen overboard in a high-running sea.

[Illustration: "THE HEAD SMOUTCHY."]

But of all Smoutchies the worst variety is that reared in the vicinity
of the small manufacturing town. He thrives on wages too early and too
easily earned. Foul language, a tobacco pipe with the bowl turned
down, and the rotten fagends of Association football, are the signs by
which you may know him. In such a society there is always one Smoutchy
who sets the fashion, and a crowd who imitate.

In Edam the head Smoutchy of the time was Nipper Donnan. He was the
son of a fighting butcher, who in his day, and before marrying the
widow of the deceased publican of the "Black Bull," had been a yet
more riotous drover, and had almost met the running expenses of the
Sheriff Court by his promptly paid fines.

The only things Nipper Donnan feared were the small, round, deep-set
eyes of his father. The police were a sport to him. The
well-brought-up children of the Grammar School trembled at his name.
The rough lads at work in the mills on the Edam Water almost
worshipped him; for it was known that his father gave him lessons in
pugilism. He sported a meerschaum pipe; a spotted handkerchief was
always knotted knowingly round his throat, and a white bull-dog, with
red sidelong eyes and lips drawn up at the corners, followed close at
his heel.

Great in Edam and on all the banks of the Edam Water was Nipper
Donnan, the King of the Smoutchies.

And it was into his hard, rough, unclean hands that our brave General
Napoleon had fallen. Now Nipper had been reared in special hatred of
the Smiths of Windy Standard. Mr. Picton Smith it was who, long ago at
Edam Fair, as a young man, had interfered with Drover Donnan, when he
was just settling to "polish off" a soft, good-natured shepherd of the
hills, whom he had failed to cheat out of the price of his
"blackfaces." Mr. Picton Smith it was who on the same occasion had
sentenced the riotous drover to "thirty days without the option of a
fine." He it was in times more recent who had been the means of
getting the Black Bull shut up, upon the oft-repeated complaint of the
Chief Constable.

And so all this heritage of hatred was now to be worked off on the son
of the gentleman by the son of the bully. Of course it might just as
well have been the other way about, for there is no absolute heredity
in Smoutchydom. The butcher might easily have been the gentleman, and
the landlord's son the Smoutchy bully; only to Hugh John's cost, on
this occasion it happened to be the other way about.

The lads who followed Nipper Donnan were mostly humble admirers--some
more cruel, some less, but sworn Smoutchies to a man, and all afraid
to interfere with the fierce pleasures of their chief. Indeed, so
absolute was Captain Nipper Donnan, that there never was a time when
some of his band did not bear the marks of his attentions.




CHAPTER XVII.

BEFORE THE INQUISITION.


With this excursion into the natural history of the Smoutchy Boy,
which perhaps ought to have come somewhat earlier in the history, we
continue the tale of the adventures of General Napoleon Smith.

Beaten down by numbers, the hero lay on the ground at the corner of
the butcher's parks. Nipper Donnan stood over him and held him down
with his foot. They were just the right ages for bully and bullied.
Hugh John Smith was twelve, slim, and straight as an arrow; Nipper
Donnan sixteen, short, hard, and thick set, with large solid hands and
prominent knuckles.

"Got you at last, young prig! Now I'll do you to rights!" remarked
Nipper, genially kicking Hugh John in the ribs with his hobnailed
boots.

Hugh John said not a word, for he had fought till there was no more
breath left in him anywhere.

"Sulky, hey?" said Nipper, with another kick in a more tender spot.
Hugh John winced. "Ah, lads, I thought that would wake the young swell
up. Oh, our father is the owner of this property, is he? So nice! He
owns the town, does he? Nasty pauper he is! Too poor to keep a proper
carriage, but thinks us all dirt under his feet. Yaw, yaw, we aw-w so
fine, we aw-w, we a-aw!"

And Nipper Donnan imitated, amid the mean obsequious laughter of his
fighting tail, the erect carriage of his father's enemy, Mr. Picton
Smith, as he was accustomed to stride somewhat haughtily down the High
Street of Edam.

Then he came back and kicked Hugh John again.

"You wouldn't dare to do this if my father were here!" said General
Napoleon, now sitting up on his elbow.

"_Your_ father, I'll show you!" shouted furiously Nipper the Tyrant.
"Who asked you to come here anyway to meddle with us? Who invited you
into our parks? What business have you in our castle? Fetch him along,
boys; we'll show him something that neither he nor his father know
anything about. They and the likes of them used to shut up people in
the castle dungeons, so they say. We are just the boys to give 'em a
taste of what it is like theirselves."

"Hooray," shouted the Smoutchy fighting tail; "fetch him along, lads!"

So with no gentle hands Hugh John was seized and hurried away. He was
touched up with ironbound clogs in the rear, his arms were pinched
underneath where the skin is tender, as well as nearly dragged from
their sockets. A useless red cravat was thrust into his mouth by way
of a gag--useless, for the prisoner would sooner have died than have
uttered one solitary cry.

And all the time Hugh John was saying over and over to himself the
confession of his faith:

"I'm glad I didn't tell--I'm glad I wasn't 'dasht-mean.' I'm a
soldier. The Scots Greys saluted me; and these fellows _shan't_ make
me cry."

And they didn't. For the spirit of many generations of stalwart Smiths
and fighting Pictons was in him, and perhaps also a spark from the
ancestral anvil of the first Smith had put iron into his boyish blood.
So all through the scene which followed--the slow mock trial, the
small ingenious tortures, pulling back middle fingers, hanging up by
thumbs to a beam with his toes just touching the ground, tying a
string about his head and tightening it with a twisted stick--Hugh
John never cried a tear, which was the bitterest drop in the cup of
Nipper Donnan.

They removed the gag in order that they might question him.

"Say this is not your father's castle, and we'll let you down!" cried
Nipper.

"It _is_ my father's and nobody else's! And when it is mine, I shan't
let one of you beasts come near it."

The Smoutchies tried another tack.

"Promise you won't tell on us if we let you go!"

"I shan't promise; I will tell every one of your names to the
policeman, and get you put in jail--so there! My father has gone to
London to see the Queen, and have you all put into prison--yes, and
whipped with a cat-o'-nine-tails as soon as ever he comes back!"
answered Hugh John, shamelessly belying both his father and his own
intentions.

But he comforted himself and excused the lie, by saying to himself,
"It is none of their business whether I tell on them or not. They
shan't think that I don't tell because I am afraid of them!"

And the great heart of the hero (aged twelve) stood high and unshaken.

At last even Nipper Donnan tired of the cruel sport. It was no great
fun when the victim could not be made to cry or appeal for mercy. And
even the fighting tail grew vaguely restive, perhaps becoming
indistinctly conscious, in spite of their blind admiration for their
chief, that by comparison with the steadfast defiance and upright mien
of their solitary victim, the slouching, black-pipe-smoking
smoutchiness of Nipper Donnan did not appear the truly heroic figure.

"Let's put him in the dungeon, and leave him there! I can come and
let him out after, and then kick the beggar home the way he came! That
will learn him to let us alone for ever and ever!"

The fighting tail shouted agreement, and Hugh John was promptly haled
to the mouth of the prison-house; a rope was rove about his waist, his
hands were tied behind his back, and he was lowered down into the
ancient dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard. This place of
confinement had last been used a hundred and fifty years ago for the
stragglers of the Bonny Prince's army after the retreat northward. The
dungeon was bottle-necked above, and spread out beneath into a
circular vault of thirty or forty feet in diameter. Its depth was
about twelve feet; and as the boys had not rope enough to lower their
prisoner all the way, they had perforce to let Hugh John drop, and he
lighted on his feet, taking of course the rope with him.

"Come on, lads," cried Nipper Donnan, "let's go and have a smoke at
the Black Sheds, and then go up to the Market Hill to see the shows.
The proud swine will do well enough down there till his father comes
back from London with the cat-o'-nine-tails!"

He looked over the edge and spat into the dungeon.

"That for you!" he cried. "Will ye say now that the castle is your
father's, and that we have no right here!"

Hugh John tried to give the required information as to ownership, but
it was choked in the folds of the red cravat. Nipper went on
tauntingly, all unchallenged.

[Illustration: "'WILL YE SAY NOW THAT THE CASTLE IS YOUR FATHER'S, AND
THAT WE HAVE NO RIGHT HERE!' SAID NIPPER DONNAN."]

"There's ethers (adders) down there--and weasels and whopper rats that
eat off your fingers and toes. Yes, and my father saw a black beast
like an otter, but as big as a calf, run in there out of the Edam
Water; and they'll bite ye and stang ye and suck your blood! And we
are never coming back no more, so ye'll die of starvation besides."

With this pleasing speech by way of farewell and benediction, Nipper
Donnan drew off his forces, and Hugh John was left alone.




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CASTLE DUNGEON.


For some time after Hugh John was thus imprisoned, he stood looking up
with a face of set defiance through the narrow aperture above, where
he had last seen the triumphant countenances of his foes.

"Who's afraid? They shan't say Hugh John Picton Smith is afraid!" were
the words in his proud and angry heart, which kept him from feeling
insult and pain, kicks and buffetings. Gradually, however, as the
sound of retreating footsteps died away, the rigid attitude of the
hero relaxed. He began to be conscious that he was all one great ache,
that the ropes were drawn exceedingly tight about his wrists, that
the gag in his mouth hurt his cheeks, that he was very tired--and, oh!
shame for a hero of battles and martyr in secret torture-chambers,
that he wanted badly to sit down and cry.

"But I won't cry--even to myself!" said Hugh John. Yet all the same he
sat mournfully down to consider his position. He did not doubt that he
had been left there for altogether, and he began at once (perhaps to
keep himself from crying) to argue out the chances.

"First," he said, "I must wriggle my hands loose, then I can get the
gag out of my mouth easy enough. After that I've got to count my
stores, and see if I can find a rusty nail to write my name on the
wall and the date of my captivity."

(Hugh John wanted to do everything decently and in order.)

"Then I must find a pin or a needle (a needle if possible--a pin is
poisonous, and besides it is so much more easy to prick blood from
your thumb with a needle), and then I have got to write an account of
my sufferings on linen like the abbe, or on tablets of bread like
Latude. As I have no bread, except the lump that was left over at
breakfast, I suppose it will need to be written on linen; but bread
tablets are much the more interesting. Of course I could make one or
two tablets, write secret messages on them, and eat them after."

General Smith would have gone on to make still further arrangements
for the future, but the present pain of the blood in his hands and
the tightness of the rope at his wrists warned him that he had better
begin the practical work of effecting his release.

Now General Smith was not one of that somewhat numerous class of
persons who take all day to do nothing, and as soon as he was
convinced by indisputable logic of the wisdom of any course, he threw
himself heart and soul into the accomplishment of it. On his hands and
knees he went half round the circuit of the wall of his prison, but
encountered nothing save the bare clammy stones--with the mortar loose
and crumbly in the joints, and the moist exudations of the lime
congealed into little stony blobs upon the surface which tasted
brackish when he put his lips to them.

So Hugh John stood up and began a new search on another level. This
time he did find something to the purpose.

About three feet from the ground was a strong nail driven firmly into
a joint of the masonry. Probably it owed its position to one of the
Highland prisoners of the Forty-five, who had used it to hang his
spare clothes on, or for some other purpose. But in his heart Hugh
John dated it from the days of the Black Douglas at least.

Either way it proved most useful.

Standing with his back to the wall, the boy could just reach it with
his wrists. He had long thin hands with bones which, when squeezed,
seemed to have a capacity for fitting still more closely into one
another. So it was not difficult for him to open the palms
sufficiently to let the head of the nail in. Then biting his teeth
upon his lip to keep the pain at a bearable point, he bent the weight
of his body this way and that upon the iron pin, so that in five or
six minutes he had worked Nipper Donnan's inartistic knots
sufficiently loose to slip over his wrists. His hands were free.

[Illustration: "HE BENT THE WEIGHT OF HIS BODY THIS WAY AND THAT."]

His first act was to take the red cravat out of his mouth, and the
next after that to lie down with all his weight upon his hands,
holding them between the floor of the dungeon and his breast, for the
tingling pain of the blood returning into the fingers came nearer to
making the hero cry than all that had happened that day. But he still
refrained.

"No, I won't, I am a Napoleon--Smith!" he added as an afterthought, as
if in loyalty to the father, whose legal and territorial claims he had
that day so manfully upheld.

But suddenly what was due to his dignified position as a state
prisoner occurred to him. Casanova had struck at the wall till his
fingers bled. Latude had gnashed his teeth, howled with anguish, and
gnawed the earth.

"I have not done any of these things," said Hugh John; "I don't like
it. But I suppose I've got to try!"

However, one solid rap of his knuckles upon the hard limestone of the
dungeon wall persuaded him that there were things more amusing in the
world than to imitate Casanova in that. And as at the first gnaw his
mouth encountered a tiny nettle, he leaped to his feet and declared at
the pitch of his voice that both Latude and Casanova were certainly
"dasht fools!"

The sound of his own words reminded him that after all he was within a
mile of home. He wondered what time it might be. He began to feel
hungry, and the cubic capacity of his internal emptiness persuaded him
that it must be at least quite his usual dinner-time.

So Hugh John decided that, all things being considered, it would be
nothing against his manhood if he called for help, and took his chance
of any coming. But he remembered that the mouth of the dungeon was in
a very retired part of the castle, in the wing nearest to the river,
and shut off from the road across the island by a flanking tower and
a thirteen-foot wall. So he was not very sanguine of success. Still he
felt that in his perilous position he could not afford to neglect any
chance, however slight.

So he shouted manfully, "Help! Help! Murder! Police! Fire!" as loud as
he could bawl.

Then he tried the "Coo-ee" which Sergeant Steel had taught him, under
the impression that it would carry farther. But the keep of a
fourteenth century castle and thirteen feet of shell lime and rubble
masonry are proof against the most willing boyish voice in the world.
So General Napoleon made no more impression upon his friends than his
great original would have done had he summoned the Old Guard from the
cliffs of St. Helena.

But the younger warrior was not discouraged. He had tried one plan and
it had failed. He sat down again to think what was the next thing to
be done.

He remembered the thick "hunk" of bread he had put in the pocket of
his jacket in the morning. He could not eat it at breakfast, so
greatly had he been excited by the impending conflict; so, to prevent
waste, and to make all safe, he had put it in his pocket. Besides, in
the absence of his father, it was not always possible to be in for
meals. And--well, one never knew what might happen. It was best to be
prepared for all emergencies.

With trembling hand he felt for the "hunk." Alas! the jacket pocket
was empty, and hung flat and limp against his side. The staff of life
must have fallen out in the progress of the fray, or else one of the
enemy had despoiled him of his treasure.

A quick thought struck his military mind, accustomed before all else
to deal with questions of commissariat. It was just possible that the
bread might have fallen out of his pocket when the Smoutchies were
letting him down so roughly into the dungeon of the castle.

He went directly underneath the aperture, from which a faint light was
distributed over the uneven floor of hard trampled earth whereon a
century's dry dust lay ankle deep.

There--there, almost under his feet, was his piece of bread!

Hugh John picked it up, blew the dust carefully off, and wiped the
surface with his handkerchief. It was a good solid piece of bread, and
would have served Caesar the Potwalloper for at least two mouthfuls.
With care it might sustain life for an indefinite period--perhaps as
much as twenty-four hours.

So, in accordance with the best traditions, the prisoner divided his
provision with his pocketknife, as accurately as possible under the
circumstances. He cut it into cubes of about an inch square, exactly
as if he had been going to lay down rat poison.

Napoleon Smith was decidedly beginning to recover his spirits. For one
thing, he thought how very few boys had ever had his chances. A Latude
of twelve was somewhat unusual in the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, and even in the adjacent islands. He began at once to
write his memoirs in his head, but found that he could not get on very
well, because he could not remember which one of his various
great-grandmothers had danced with Bonny Prince Charlie at Edinburgh.
This for a loyal prisoner was insuperable, so he gave the memoirs up.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE DROP OF WATER.


From fruitless genealogy he turned to the further consideration of his
supplies. He wanted water, and in a dungeon surrounded by lime-stone
walls and founded upon a rock, it seemed likely he would continue to
want it. But at the farthest corner, just where the roof approached
most closely to the floor, Hugh John could hear a _pat_, _pat_ at
regularly recurring intervals. He put his hand forward into the
darkness, and immediately a large drop of water fell on the back of
it. He set his tongue to it, and it tasted cool and good after the
fustiness of the woollen gag.

Hugh John thrust forward his hand again, palm upwards this time, and
was rewarded by finding that every time he counted ten slowly a large
drop, like those in the van of a thunder storm, splashed into the
hollow. It was tedious work, but then a dungeon is a slow place, and
he had plenty of time. He crawled forward to be nearer to the source
of supplies, and while trying to insinuate his head sideways
underneath like a dog at a spout, to catch the drop in his mouth
without the intervention of a warm hand, he felt that his knee was
wet. He had inadvertently placed it in a small natural basin into
which the drop had been falling for ages. Hugh John set his lips to
it, and never did even soda-water-and-milk, that nectar of the meagre
and uncritical gods of boyhood, taste sweeter or more refreshing.
After he had taken a good solid drink he cleaned the sand from the
bottom carefully, and there, ready to his hand, was a stone cup
hollowed out of a projecting piece of the rock on which the castle was
built. This well-anchored drinking-cup was shaped like the
pecten-shell of pilgrimage, and set with the broad fluted end towards
him.

Thus fortified with meat and drink, for he had devoured the first of
his rat-poison squares, or rather bolted it like a pill, General
Napoleon sat down to reckon up his resources. He found himself in
possession of some ten feet of fairly good cord, which had evidently
been used for bringing cattle to the fatal Black Sheds of butcher
Donnan. The prisoner carefully worked out all the knots, in order to
get as much length as possible. He did not, indeed, see how such a
thing could help him to escape, but that was not his business, for in
the authorities a rope was always conveyed into the cell of the pining
captive, generally in an enormous pie.

Hugh John felt that he was indeed a pining captive, but it was the pie
and not the rope he pined for. His dungeon was downstairs, and he did
not see how a rope could possibly help him to get out, unless there
was somebody at the top of the bottle ready to haul him up.

He tried his voice again, and made the castle ring in vain. Alas! only
the echoes came back, the pert jackdaws cried out insolently far above
him and mocked him in a clamorous crowd from the ruined gables.

Then his mind went off all of itself to the pleasant dining-room of
the house of Windy Standard, where Prissy and Sir Toady Lion would
even now be sitting down to tea. He could smell the nice refreshing
bouquet of the hot china pot as Janet Sheepshanks poured the tea into
the cups in a golden brown jet, and then "doused" in the cream with a
liberal hand.

"I declare I could drink up the whole tea-pot full without ever
stopping," said Hugh John aloud, and then started at the sound of his
own voice.

He waited as long as possible, and then ate the second of his squares
of bread. Then he drank the mouthful of water which had gathered in
the stone shell. While he was in there underneath the dungeon eaves,
he put out his hand to feel how far off the wall was. He expected
easily to reach it, but in this he failed entirely. His hand was
merely stretched out into space, while the drop fell upon his head,
and then upon his neck, as he leaned farther and farther over in his
efforts to find a boundary wall.

He had noticed from the first that the floor immediately beneath the
cup was quite dry all round, but it had not occurred to him before
that if the drop fell constantly and regularly the basin must overflow
in some direction. Hugh John was not logical. It is true that he liked
finding out things by his five senses, but then that is a very
different affair. Sammy Carter tried to argue with him sometimes, and
make matters clear to him by pure reason. The first time Hugh John
usually told him to "shut it." The second he simply hammered the
logician.

Finally, to solve the mystery, Hugh John crawled completely over his
drinking fountain and kneeled in the damp sand at the back of the
basin. Still he could discover no wall. Next, he put his hand forward
as far as it would reach out, and--he _could feel no floor_.

Very gingerly he put his foot over the edge, and at once found himself
on the top step of a steep, narrow, and exceedingly uneven stair. The
explorer's heart beat fast within him. He knew what it was now that he
had found--a secret passage, perhaps ending in an enchanted cave;
perhaps (who knew) in a pirate's den. He thought of Nipper Donnan's
last words about the beast as big as a calf which his father had seen
going down into the dungeon. It was a lie, of course; it must be,
because Nipper Donnan said it; but still it was certainly very dark
and dismal down there.

Hugh John listened with his ear pointed down the stair, and his mouth
open. He certainly did hear a low, rushing, hissing sound, which might
be the Edam water surrounding the old tower, or--the breathing of the
Black Beast.

If Hugh John had had even Toady Lion with him, he would have felt no
fears; but to be alone in silence and darkness is fitted to shake
stronger nerves than those of a twelve-year-old boy. It was getting
late, as he knew by the craving ache in his stomach, and also by the
gradual dusking of the hole twelve feet above his head, through whose
narrow throat he had been let down in the forenoon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now at first the Smoutchy boys had not meant to leave Hugh John in the
dungeon all night, but only to give him a thorough fright for his
hardihood in daring to attack their citadel. But Nipper Donnan's
natural resolution was ever towards cruelty of all sorts, and it was
turned to adamant upon discovering that Donald, the captured hostage
and original cause of conflict, had in some mysterious way escaped.

This unexpected success of the attacking party he attributed, of
course, to Hugh John, whom, in spite of his youth, he well knew to be
the leading spirit. Sir Toady Lion was never so much as suspected--a
fact which would have pleased that doughty warrior but little had he
known it.

In the afternoon Nipper had gone to Halkirk Tryst to bring home two
bullocks, which Butcher Donnan had bought there the day before; but
his father becoming involved in some critical cattle-dealing
transaction, for which he was unable to obtain satisfaction in cash,
resolved that Nipper should wait till the next day, when he hoped to
be able to accompany him home in person. So engrossed was Nipper with
the freaks of the fair, the Aunt-Sallies, the shooting-galleries, and
miscellaneous side-shows and ghost illusions, that he quite forgot all
about our hero immured in the dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard.
Even had he remembered, he would certainly have said to himself that
some of the other boys would be sure to go and let him out (for which
interference with his privileges he would assuredly punch their heads
to-morrow!)--and that in any case it served the beggar right.

Probably, however, his father (had Nipper thought fit to mention the
matter to him), would have taken quite a different view of the
situation; for the butcher, with all his detestation of the owner of
the Windy Standard estate, held Mr. Picton Smith in a wholesome awe
which almost amounted to reverence.

So it came about that none approached the castle all that afternoon;
for the boys of Nipper's band were afraid to venture upon the castle
island in the absence of their redoubtable chief, while the servants
of Windy Standard House sought for the vanished in quite other
directions, being led astray by the innocent assertions of Toady Lion,
who had last seen Hugh John defending himself gallantly against
overwhelming numbers in the corner of the field nearest to the town,
and at least half a mile as the crow flies from the castle on the
island.




CHAPTER XX.

THE SECRET PASSAGE.


For a full hour Hugh John sat on the top step of the stairs, or went
back and forward between these and the narrow circular opening so high
above his head, which was now filled with a sort of ruddy haze, the
sign that the sun was setting comfortably and sedately outside, behind
the smooth green hills in which the Cheviots broke down into the
Solway Marshes. It was not so much that the boy dared not descend into
the secret passage. Rather he did not wish to confront the blankness
of disappointment. The steps might lead nowhere at all. They might
drop off suddenly into the depths of a well.

To prove to himself that he was quite calm, and also that he was in no
hurry, Hugh John ate the third of his bread-squares and drank the
water which had meantime collected in the stone shell. Heroes always
refreshed themselves thus before an adventure.

"'None knoweth when our lips shall touch the blessed bread again!'
This prog's too hanged dry for anything!"--that was what Hugh John
said, quoting (partly) from the "Life and Death of Arthur the King."

Then feeling that mere poetry was off and that the time for action had
definitely come, he tied to his rope a large fallen stone which lay in
a corner, and crawling over the shell to the head of the steps, he
threw it down. It did not go far, appearing to catch in some
projection. He tried again with a like result. He pulled it up. The
stone was dry. The opening was not, then, a well with water at the
bottom.

So Hugh John cautiously put his foot upon the threshold of the secret
passage, and commenced the perilous descent. He clutched the edge of
the top step as he let himself down. It was cold, wet, and clammy, but
the stones beneath seemed secure enough. So he continued to descend
till he found himself in a narrow staircase which went down and down,
gradually twisting to the left away from the light. His heart beat
fast, and there was a curious heavy feeling about his nostrils, which
doubtless came from the damp mists of a confined place so close to the
river.

The adventurous General had descended quite a long way when he came to
a level stone-flagged passage. He advanced twenty yards along it, and
then put out his hands. He found himself in a narrow cell, dripping
with wet and ankle deep in mud. The cell was so small, that by making
a couple of steps Hugh John could feel it from side to side. At the
farther end of it there was evidently a door or passage of some sort,
but it was blocked up with fallen stones and rubbish; yet through it
came the strangest muffled noises. Something coughed like a man in
pain. There was also a noise as of the feet of animals moving about
stealthily and restlessly, and he seemed even to hear voices speaking.

A wild unreasoning fear suddenly filled the boy's heart. He turned and
fled, stumbling hastily up the stairs by which he had so cautiously
descended. The thought of the black beast, great as a calf, of which
Nipper Donnan had spoken, came upon him and almost mastered him. Yet
all the time he knew that Nipper had only said it to frighten him. But
it was now dark night, even in the upper dungeon. He was alone in a
haunted castle, and, as the gloaming settled down, Hugh John cordially
agreed with Sir David Brewster, who is reputed to have said, "I do not
believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them."

In spite of all his gallantry of the day, and the resolutions he had
made that his prison record should be strictly according to rule, Hugh
John's sudden panic took complete hold of him. He sat down under the
opening of the dungeon, and for the first time cried bitter tears,
excusing himself on the ground that there was no one there to see him,
and anyway he could easily leave that part out when he came to write
his journal. About this time he also slipped in a surreptitious
prayer. He thought that at least it could do no harm. Prissy had
induced him to try this method sometimes, but mostly he was afraid to
let her know about it afterwards, because it made Prissy so unbearably
conceited. But after all this was in a dungeon, and many very
respectable prisoners quite regularly said their prayers, as any one
may see for themselves in the books.

"You see," said Hugh John, explanatorily afterwards, "it's very easy
for them. They have nothing else to do. They haven't to wash, and take
baths, and comb their hair, and be ordered about! It's easy to be good
when you're leading a natural life."

This was Hugh John's prayer, and a model for any soldier's
pocket-book.

"Our Father Witch-Charta-Nevin" (this he considered a Christian name
and surname, curious but quite authoritative), "help me to get out of
this beastly hole. Help me to lick Nipper Donnan till he can't stand,
and bust Sammy Carter for running away. For we are all miserable
sinners. God bless father and Prissy, Arthur George (I wonder where
the little beast went to--guess he sneaked--just wait!), Janet
Sheepshanks, Mary Jane Housemaid, and everybody about the house and
down at the stables, except Bella Murdoch, that is a clash-bag and a
tell-tale-tit. And make me a good boy. For Jesus' sake. Aymen."

That the last petition was by no means a superfluous one every reader
of this history will agree. Hugh John very carefully said "Ay-men"
now, because he had said "A-men" in the morning. He noticed that his
father always said "Ay-men" very solemnly at the end of a prayer,
while Prissy, who liked going to church even on week days (a low
dodge!), insisted upon "A-men." So Hugh John used "Ay-men" and "A-men"
time about, just to show that there was no ill-feeling. Thus early in
life does the leaven of Gallio (who "cared for none of these things")
begin to show itself. Hugh John was obviously going to be a very
pronounced Broad Churchman.

The prayer did the captive General much good. He was not now nearly so
much afraid of the beasts. The hole did not seem to yawn so black
beneath him; and though he kept his ear on the cock for anything that
might come at him up the stairs, he could with some tolerable
composure sit still and wait for the morning. He decided that so soon
as it was even a little light, he would try again and find out if he
could not remove the rubbish from the further door.

The midsummer morn was not long in coming--shorter far indeed to Hugh
John than to the anxious hearts that were scattered broadcast over the
face of the country seeking for him. Scarcely had the boy sat down to
wait for the daylight when his head sank on his breast. Presently he
swayed gently to the side, and turning over with a contented little
murmur, he curled himself up like a tired puppy and went fast asleep.
When he awoke, a fresher pink radiance than that of eventide filled
the aperture above his head--the glow of the wide, sweet, blushful
dawn which flooded all the eastern sky outside the tall grey walls of
the Castle of Windy Standard.

Hugh John rose, stretched himself, yawned, and looked about him in
surprise. There was no Toady Lion in a little white ship on four iron
legs, moored safe alongside him; no open door through into Prissy's
room; no birch-tree outside the window, glimmering purest white and
delicatest pink in the morning light--nothing, in short, that had
greeted his waking eyes every morning of his life hitherto.

But there were compensations. He was a prisoner. He had endured a
night in a dungeon. His hair would almost certainly have turned pure
white, or at least streaky. What boy of his age had ever done these
things since the little Dauphin, about whom he was so sorry, and over
whose fate he had shed such bitter tears? Had Sammy Carter? Hugh John
smiled a sarcastic and derisive smile. Sammy Carter indeed! He would
just like to see Sammy Carter try it once! _He_ would have been dead
by this time, if he had had to go through the tenth of what he (Hugh
John) had undergone. Had Mike or Peter? They were big and strong. They
smoked pipes. But they had never been tortured, never shut up in a
dungeon with wild beasts in the next compartment, and no hasp on the
door.

The staircase--the secret passage! Hugh John's heart fluttered wildly.
He might even yet get back in time for breakfast. There would be
porridge--and egg-and-bacon--oh! crikey, yes, and it was kidney
morning. Hugh John's mouth watered. There was no need of the cool
fluid in the shell of limestone now! Could there indeed be such
dainties in the world? It did not seem possible. And yet that very
morning--he meant the morning before--no, surely it must have been in
some other life infinitely remote, he had grumbled because he had not
had cream instead of milk to his porridge, and because the bacon was
not previously crisp enough. He felt that if ever he were privileged
to taste as good bacon again, he would become religious like
Prissy--or take some such extreme measure as that.

[Illustration: "OVER THE CLOSELY PACKED WOOLLY BACKS HE SAW A STRETCH
OF RIPPLED RIVER."]

Hugh John had no appetite for the "poison squares" now. He tried one,
and it seemed to be composed in equal parts of sawdust and the
medicament called "Rough-on-rats!" He tried the water in the shell,
and that was somewhat better; but just to think of tea from the
urn--soft ivory cream floating on the top, curded a little but light
as blown sea-foam! Ah, he could wait no longer. The life of a prisoner
was all very well, but he could not even get materials with which to
write up his diary till he got home. For this purpose it was necessary
that he should immediately make his escape. Also it was kidney
morning, and if he did not hurry that little wretch Toady Lion would
have eaten up every snatch. He resolved to lose no time.

So with eager steps he descended the steep wet stairs into the little
stone chamber, which smelt fearfully damp and clammy, just as if all
the snails in the world had been crawling there.

"I bet the poor chap down here had toothache," said Hugh John,
shivering as he went forward to attack the pile of fallen stones in
front of the arched doorway. For an hour he worked most manfully,
pulling out such as he could manage to loosen, and tossing others
aside. Thus he gradually undercut the mass which blocked up the door,
till, with a warning creak or two the whole pitched forward and
inward, giving the daring pioneer just time to leap aside before it
came toppling into the narrow cell, which it more than half filled. As
soon as the avalanche had settled, Hugh John staggered over the top of
the fallen stones and broken _debris_ to the small door. As his head
came on a level with the opening he saw a strange sight. He looked
into a little ruined turret, the floor of which was of smoothest green
sward--or, rather, which would have been of green sward had it not
been thickly covered with sheep, all lying placidly shoulder to
shoulder, and composedly drawing in the morning air through their
nostrils as if no such word as "mutton" existed in the vocabularies of
any language.

Beyond and over the closely packed woolly backs he saw a stretch of
rippled river, faceted with diamond and ruby points, where the rising
sun just touched the tips of the little chill wavelets which were
fretted by the wind of morning, that gust of cooler air which the dawn
pushes before it round the world. Hugh John was free!




CHAPTER XXI.

THE RETURN FROM THE BASTILE.


He stepped down easily and lightly among the sheep. They rose without
surprise or disorder, still with strict attention to business
continuing to munch at the grass they had plucked as they lay, for all
the world as if a famous adventure-seeking general had been only the
harmless but boresome shepherd who came to drive them out to pastures
new. For all the surprise they showed they might have been accustomed
from their fleeciest infancy to small, dirty, scratched, bruised,
infinitely tattered imps of imperial descent arriving suddenly out of
unexplored secret passages in ancient fortresses.

The great commander's first instinct was to rush for home and so make
sure that Cook Mary the Second had done enough kidneys for breakfast.
His second idea, and one more worthy of his military reputation, was
carefully to conceal the entrance to the doorway, by which he had
emerged from the passage he had so wonderfully discovered. No one knew
how soon the knowledge might prove useful to him. As a matter of
attack and defence the underground passage was certainly not to be
neglected.

Then Hugh John drove the sheep before him out of the fallen tower. As
he did so one of them coughed, stretching its neck and holding its
head near the ground. He now knew the origin of the sound which
had--no, not frightened him (of course not!), but slightly surprised
him the evening before.

And, lo! there, immediately in front of him as he emerged, was the
Edam Water, sliding and rippling on under its willows, the slim,
silvery-grey leaves showing their white under-sides just as usual.
There, across the river, were the cattle, standing already knee-deep
in the shallows, their tails nervy and switchy on the alert for the
morning's crop of flies. There was Mike going to drive them in to be
milked. Yonder in the far distance was a black speck which must be
Peter polishing straps and buckles hung on a pin by the stable door.

"Horrid beasts every one of them!" said Hugh John indignantly to
himself, "going on all as comfortable as you please, just as if I had
not been pining in a dungeon cell for years and years."

Then setting his cramped wet legs in motion, General Napoleon
commenced a masterly retreat in the direction of home. He dashed for
the stepping-stones, but he was in too much of a hurry to make sure of
hitting them. He slipped from the first and went above the knee into
the clear cool Edam Water. After that he simply floundered through,
and presently emerged dripping on the other side. Along the woodland
paths he scurried and scampered. He dashed across glades, scattering
the rabbits and kicking up the dew in the joy of recovered freedom. He
climbed a stone dyke into the home park, because he had no time to go
round by the stile. He brought half of the fence down in his haste,
scraping his knee as he did so. But so excited was he that he scarcely
felt the additional bruise.

He ran up the steps. The front door was standing wide open, with the
disreputable and tell-tale air of a reveller who has been out all
night in evening dress. All doors have this look which have not been
decently shut and locked during the dark hours. There was no one in
the hall--no one in the dining-room--no one in the schoolroom, where
the children's tea of the night before had never been cleared away.
Hugh John noticed that his own place had been set, and the clean cup
and plate and the burnished unused knife struck him as infinitely
pathetic.

But he was hungry, and had no time to waste on mere feelings. His
inner man was too insistent. He knew well where the pantry was (trust
him for that!), and he went towards it at the rate of twenty miles an
hour. He wished he had remembered to add a petition to his prayer that
it might be unlocked. But it was now too late for this, so he must
just trust in an unjogged Providence and take his chances.

The gods were favourable. They had evidently agreed that for one small
boy he had suffered enough for that day. The pantry was unlocked.
There was a lovely beefsteak pie standing on a shelf. Hugh John lifted
it off, set it on the candle box, ungratefully throwing Sambo Soulis
on the floor in order to make elbow room, and then with a knife and
fork he proceeded to demolish the pie. The knife and fork he first put
his hands on had obviously been used. But did General Napoleon stop to
go to the schoolroom for clean ones? No--several thousand times no!
Those who can, for a single moment, entertain such thoughts, are very
far from having yet made the acquaintance of General Smith. Why, he
did not even wait to say grace--though he usually repeated
half-a-dozen the first thing in the morning, so as to have the job
well over for the day. It is all right to say grace, but it is such a
fag to have to remember before every meal. So Hugh John went into the
wholesale business.

He was half through the pie before he looked about for something to
drink. Lemonade, if it could be found, would meet the case. Hugh John
felt this keenly, and, lo! the friendly Fates, with a smile, had
planted a whole case of it at his feet. He knocked in the patent
stopper with the handle of his knife (all things must yield to
military necessity), and, after the first draught, what more was
there left to live for--except a second bottle and the rest of the
pie?

He was just doing his best to live up to the nice cool jelly, which
melted in a kind of lingering chill of delight down his throat, when
Janet Sheepshanks appeared in the doorway. Wearily and disheartenedly,
she had come in to prepare for a breakfast which no one in all Windy
Standard would eat. Something curious about the feeling of the house
had struck her as she entered. She had gone from room to room, divided
between hope and apprehension, and, lo! there before her, in her own
ravished pantry, tuck-full of beefsteak pie and lemonade, sat the boy
for whom they were even then dragging the deepest pools of the Edam.

"Oh, thank the Lord, laddie!" cried Janet, clasping her hands in
devout thankfulness, "that He hath spared ye to your widowed
faither--and to me, your auld unworthy nurse!"

The tears were running down her cheeks. Somehow her face had quite
suddenly grown grey and worn. She looked years older than she had done
yesterday. Hugh John paused and looked at her marvelling. He had a
heavily laden fork half-way to his mouth. He wondered what all the
fuss was about.

"Do get me some mustard, Janet," he said, swinging his wet legs; "and
where on earth have you put the pickles?"

       *       *       *       *       *

In the cross-examination which naturally followed, Hugh John kept his
own counsel, like the prudent warrior he was. He left Janet and the
others to suppose that, in trying to escape from his foes, he had
"fallen" into the castle dungeon, and none of the household servants
knew enough of the topography of the ancient stronghold to know that,
if he had done so, he would probably have broken his neck. He said
nothing about Nipper Donnan or any of the band by name. Simply and
truthfully he designated them as "some bad boys," which certainly was
in no way overstating the case.

Perhaps if his father had been at home he could not have hoodwinked
his questioners so easily and completely. Mr. Picton Smith would
certainly have gone deeper into the business than Janet Sheepshanks,
who alternately slapped and scolded, petted and spoilt our hero all
day long.

For some time Hugh John smelt of Araby the Blest and Spicy Ind; for he
had ointments and liniments, rags and plasters innumerable scattered
over his person in all directions.

He borrowed a cigarette (it was a very old and dry one) from the
mantelpiece of his father's workroom, and retired to the shelter of
the elm-tree to hold his court and take private evidence upon the
events of yesterday.

As he went across the yard Black Donald ran bleating to him, and
playfully butted at his leg.

Hugh John stopped in astonishment.

"Who found him?" he asked.

Sir Toady Lion proudly stepped forward. He had a garden rake in his
hand, with which the moment before he had been poking Donald in the
ribs, and making his life a burden to him generally.

[Illustration: "I CREATE YOU GENERAL OF THE COMM'SARIAT."]

He began to speak, but Hugh John stopped him.

"Salute, you little beast!" he said sternly.

Slowly Toady Lion's hand went up. He did not object to salute, but he
had a vague sense that, as a matter of personal dignity, not even a
general had a right to speak to a private thus--much less to a
commissariat sergeant. However, what he had to say was so triumphant
and overpowering that he waived the point and touched his forehead in
due form.

"_I_ did--nobody but me. I d'livered him, all by mineself. I cutted
the rope and d'livered Donald. Yes, I did--Prissy will tell 'oo. I
wented into the Black Sheds all alone-y--and d'livered him!"

His words came tumbling over each other in his haste. But he laid
strong emphasis upon the word "delivered," which he had just learned
from Prissy. He meant to use it very often all that day, because it
was a good word, and nobody knew the meaning of it except
Quite-Grown-Ups.

General Napoleon Smith put on his most field-marshalish expression,
and summoned Sir Toady Lion to approach.

He tapped him on the shoulder and said in a grand voice, "I create you
General of the Comm'sariat for distinguished conduct in the field.
From this time forth you can keep the key of the biscuit box, but I
know just how many are in. So mind out!"

This was good, and Toady Lion was duly grateful; but he wished his
good fortune put into a more concrete form.

"Can I have the biggest and nicerest saucer of the scrapings of the
preserving-pan to-night?"

Hugh John considered a moment. An impulse of generosity swept over
him.

"Yes, you can," he said nobly. Then a cross wave of caution caused him
to add--"that is, if it isn't rasps!"

Now the children of the house of Windy Standard were permitted to
clean out the boiling-pan in the fruit-preserving season with worn
horn spoons, in order not to scratch the copper or crack the enamel.
And rasp was Hugh John's favourite.

"Huh," said Toady Lion, turning up a contemptuous nose. "Thank 'oo for
nuffin! I like wasps just as much as 'oo, Hugh John Picton Smiff!"

"Don't answer me back, sir!"--Hugh John was using his father's words
and manner.

"Sall if I like," said Toady Lion, beginning to whimper. "Sall go and
tell Janet Sheepshanks, and she'll give me yots of wasps! Not
scrapin's neither, but weal-weal wasps--so there!"

"Toady Lion, I shall degrade you to the ranks. You are a little pig
and a disgrace to the army."

"Don't care, I wants wasps--and I d'livered Donald," reiterated the
Disgrace of the Army.

Hugh John once more felt the difficulty of arguing with Toady Lion. He
was altogether too young to be logical. So he said, "Toady Lion, you
little ass, stop snivelling--and I'll give you a bone button and the
half of a knife."

"Let's see them," said Toady Lion, cautiously uncovering one eye by
lifting up the edge of the covering palm. His commanding officer
produced the articles of peace, and Toady Lion examined them
carefully, still with one eye. They proved satisfactory.

"All yight!" said he, "I won't cry no more--but I wants three saucers
full of the wasps too!"




CHAPTER XXII.

MUTINY IN THE CAMP.


Hugh John was holding his court under the weeping-elm, and was being
visited in detail by his army. The Carters had come over, and, after a
vigorous engagement and pursuit, he had even forgiven Sammy for his
lack of hardihood in not resisting to the death at the great battle of
the Black Sheds.

"But it hurts so confoundedly," argued Sammy; "if it didn't, I
shouldn't mind getting killed a bit!"

"Look at me," said Hugh John; "I'm all over peels and I don't
complain."

"Oh! I dare say--it's all very well for you," retorted Sammy, "you
like to fight, and it was you that began the fuss, but I only fight
because you'd jolly-well-hammer me if I didn't!"

"Course I would," agreed his officer, "don't you know that's what
generals are for?"

"Well," concluded Sammy Carter, summing the matter up philosophically,
"'tain't my castle anyway."

       *       *       *       *       *

The review was over. In the safe quiet of the elm-tree shelter General
Napoleon might have been seen taking his well-earned repose. He was
surrounded by his entire following--except, of course, the two
Generals of Division, who were engaged in sweeping out the
stable-yard. But these were considered socially supernumerary at any
rate, except (a somewhat important exception) when there was fighting
to be done.

"I don't see that we've done so very much to make a brag about
anyhow," began Sammy Carter.

General Smith dexterously caught him on the ear with a young turnip,
which in company with several friends had wandered in of its own
accord from the nearest field on the home farm.

"I should say _you_ didn't do much!" he sneered pointedly; "you hooked
it as hard as you could after the first skirmish. Why, you haven't got
a single sore place about you to show for it."

"Yes, I have!" retorted Sammy in high indignation.

[Illustration: "SAMMY CARTER MUTINOUS."]

"Well, let's see it then!" commanded his general in a kindlier tone.

"Can't--ladies present!" said Sammy succinctly, into the retreating
rear-guard of whose division the triumphant enemy had charged with the
pike snatched from his sister's hands.

"All _my_ wounds are in front. _I_ fought and died with my face to the
foe!" said Hugh John in his noblest manner.

"And I d'livered Donald!" contributed Toady Lion complacently.

"Oh, _that_ ain't anything," sneered Sammy Carter, who was not in a
good humour. His tone roused General Napoleon, who had the strong
family feelings of all the Buonapartes.

"Shut up, Sammy, or I'll come and kick you. None of us did anything
except Toady Lion. You ran away, and I got taken prisoner. Toady Lion
is the only man among us!"

"I runned away too--at first," confessed the candid Toady Lion, who
felt that he had so much real credit that he did not need to take a
grain more than he deserved. "But I comed back quick--and I d'livered
Donald out of prison, anyway--I did!"

Sammy Carter evidently had a sharp retort ready on the tip of his
tongue, but he knew well the price he would have to pay for uttering
it. Hugh John's eye was upon him, his right hand was closing on a
bigger turnip--so Sammy forbore. But he kicked his feet more
discontentedly than ever into the turf.

"Well," he said, changing the venue of the argument, "I don't think
much of your old castle anyway. My father could have twice as good a
castle if he liked----"

"Oh, 'course he could"--Hugh John's voice was distinctly ironical--"he
might plant it on a peaty soil, and grow it from seed in two years; or
perhaps he would like a cutting off ours!"

Mr. Davenant Carter was a distinguished agriculturist and florist.

"Don't you speak against my father!" cried Sammy Carter, glowering at
General Napoleon in a way in which privates do not often look at their
Commanders-in-Chief.

"Who's touching your father?" the latter said, a little more
soothingly. "See here, Sammy, you've got your coat on wrong side out
to-day. Go home and sleep on it. 'Tisn't my fault if you did run away,
and got home before your sister--with a blue place on your back."

Sammy Carter flung out from under the shelter of the elm and went in
search of Prissy, from whom in all his moods he was sure of comfort
and understanding. He was a somewhat delicate boy, and generally
speaking hated quarrelling as much as she did; but he had a clever
tongue, which often brought him into trouble, and, like most other
humorists, he did not at all relish a jest at his own expense.

As he went, he was pursued and stung by the brutally unrefined taunts
of Hugh John.

"Yes, go on to Prissy; I think she has a spare doll. Go and play at
'house'! It's all you're good for!"

Thus encouraged by their general, the rest of the company--that is,
Cissy and Sir Toady Lion, joined in singing a certain stirring and
irritating refrain popular among the youth of Bordershire.

    "_Lassie-boy, lassie-boy, fie for shame!
    Coward's your nature, and Jennie's your name!_"

Sammy Carter stood poised for flight with his eyes blazing with anger.

"You think a lot of your old tumble-down castle; but the town boys
have got it in spite of you; and what's more, they've a flag flying on
it with 'Down with Smith!' on it. I saw it. Hooray for the town boys!"

And with this Parthian arrow he disappeared at full speed down the
avenue.

For a moment Hugh John was paralysed. He tried to pooh-pooh the
matter, but he could not but admit that it might very well be true; so
he instantly despatched Toady Lion for Prissy, who, as we know, was
the fleetest runner of them all. Upon her reporting for duty, the
General sent her to bring back word if the state of affairs was as
reported.

It was. A large red flag was flying, with the inscription in white
upon it, "Down with Smith!" while above the inscription there was what
looked like a rude attempt at a death's head and crossbones. Hugh John
knew this ensign in a moment. Once upon a time, in his wild youth, he
had served under it as a pirate on the high seas; but of this he now
uttered no word.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was in such moments that the true qualities of the born leader came
out in General Napoleon Smith. Instantly he dismissed his attendants,
put his finger to his forehead, and sat down to draw a map of the
campaign in the genuine Napoleonic manner.

At last, after quite a while, he rapped upon the table.

"I have it," he cried, "we must find an ally." The problem was
solved.




CHAPTER XXIII.

CISSY CARTER, BOYS' GIRL.


Now Prissy Smith was a girls' girl, while Cissy Carter was a boys'
girl. That was mainly the difference between them. Not that Prissy did
not love boys' play upon occasion, for which indeed her fleetness of
foot particularly fitted her. Also if Hugh John teased her she never
cried nor told on him, but waited till he was looking the other way
and then gave him something for himself on the ear. But on the whole
she was a girls' girl, and her idea of the way to fight was slapping
her dolls when they were naughty.

Now, Mr. Picton Smith said that most religion was summed up in two
maxims, "Don't tell lies," and "Don't tell tales." To these Hugh John
added a third, at least equal in canonicity, "Don't be dasht-mean." In
these you have briefly comprehended all the Law and the Prophets of
the house of Windy Standard.

Cissy Carter, however, was a tom-boy: you could not get over that.
There was no other word for her. She never played with girls if she
could better herself. She despised dolls; she hated botany and the
piano. Her governess had a hard but lively time of it, and had it not
been for her brother Sammy coaching her in short cuts to knowledge,
she would have been left far behind in the exact sciences of spelling
and the multiplication-table. As it was, between a tendency to
scramble for scraps of information and the run of a pretty wide
library, Cissy knew more than any one gave her credit for.

On one memorable occasion it was Cissy's duty to take her grandmother
for a walk. Now the Dowager Mrs. Davenant Carter was the dearest and
most fairy-like old lady in the world, and Cissy was very proud to
walk into Edam with her. For her grandmother had not forgotten how
good confections tasted to girls of thirteen, and there was quite a
nice shop in the High Street. Their rose-drops especially were almost
as good as doing-what-you-were-told-not-to, and their peppermints for
use in church had quite the force of a religious observance.

But Mrs. Davenant Carter had a weak eye, and whenever she went out,
she put a large green shade over it. So one day it happened that Cissy
was walking abroad with her grandmother, with a vision of
rose-drop-shop in the offing. As they were passing one of the villas
nearest to their house, a certain rude boy, Wedgwood Baker the name of
him, seeing the lame old lady tripping by on her stick like a fairy
godmother, called out loudly "Go it, old blind patch!"

He was sorry the minute after, for in one moment Cissy Carter had
pulled off her white thread gloves, climbed the fence, and had landed
what Hugh John would have called "One, two, three--and a tiger" upon
the person of Master Wedgwood Baker.

I do not say that all Cissy Carter's blows were strictly according to
Queensberry rules. But at any rate the ungallant youth was promptly
doubled up, and retreated yelling into the house, as it were falling
back upon his reserves.

That same evening the card of Mrs. Baker, Laurel Villa, Edam, was
brought to the diningtable of Mrs. Davenant Carter.

"The lady declines to come in, m'am. She says she must see you
immediately at the door," said the scandalised housemaid.

Cissy's mother went into the hall with the card in her hand, and a
look of gentle surprised inquiry on her face. There, on the doorstep
was Mrs. Baker, with a young and hopeful but sadly damaged Wedgwood
tagging behind her, like a weak-minded punt in tow of an ancient
threedecker.

[Illustration: "'LOOK AT HIM, MADAM,' SAID MRS. BAKER."]

The injured lady began at once a voluble complaint.

"Look at him, madam. That is the handiwork of your daughter. The poor
boy was quietly digging in the garden, cultivating a few unpretending
flowers, when your daughter, madam, suddenly flew at him over the
railings and struck him on the face so furiously that, if I had not
come to the rescue, the dear boy might have lost the use of both his
eyes. But most happily I heard the disturbance and went out and
stopped her."

"Dear me, this is _very_ sad," faltered little Mrs. Carter; "I'm sure
I don't know what can have come over Cissy. Are you sure there is no
mistake?"

"Mistake! No, indeed, madam, there is no mistake, I saw her with my
own eyes--a great girl twice Wedgwood's size."

At this point Mr. Davenant Carter came to the door with his
table-napkin in his hand.

"What's this--what's this?" he demanded in his quick way--"Cissy and
your son been fighting?"

"No indeed, sir," said the complainant indignantly; "this dear boy
never so much as lifted a hand to her. Ah, here she comes--the
very--ahem, young lady herself."

All ignorant of the trouble in store for her, Cissy came whistling
through the laurels with half-a-dozen dogs at her heels. At sight of
her Mrs. Baker bridled and perked her chin with indignation till all
her black bugles clashed and twinkled.

"Come here, Cissy," said her father sternly. "Did you strike this boy
to-day in front of his mother's gate?"

"Yes, I did," quoth the undaunted Cissy, "and what's more, I'll do it
again, and give him twice as much, if he ever dares to call _my_
grandmother 'Old Blind Patch' again--I don't care if he is two years
and three months older than me!"

"Did you call names at my mother?" demanded Cissy's father, towering
up very big, and looking remarkably stern.

Master Wedgwood had no denial ready; but he had his best boots on and
he looked very hard at them.

"Come, Wedgwood dear, tell them that you did not call names. You know
you could not!"

"I never called nobody names. It was her that hit me!" snivelled
Wedgwood.

"Now, you hear," said his mother, as if that settled the question.

"Oh, you little liar! Wait till I catch you out!" said Cissy, going a
step nearer as if she would like to begin again. "I'll teach you to
tell lies on me."

Mrs. Baker of Laurel Villa held up her hands so that the lace mitts
came together like the fingers of a figure of grief upon a tomb. "What
a dreadful girl!" she said, looking up as if to ask Heaven to support
her.

Mr. Davenant Carter remembered his position as a county magistrate.
Also he desired to stand well with all his neighbours.

"Madam," he said to Mrs. Baker, in the impressive tone in which he
addressed public meetings, "I regret exceedingly that you should have
been put to this trouble. I think that for the future you will have no
reason to complain of my daughter. Will you allow me to conduct you
across the policies by the shorter way? Cissy, go to bed _at once_,
and stop there till I bid you get up! That will teach you to take the
law into you own hands when your father is a Justice of the Peace!"

This he said in such a stern voice that Mrs. Baker was much flattered
and quite appeased. He walked with the lady to the small gate in the
boundary wall, opened it with his private key, and last of all shook
hands with his visitor with the most distinguished courtesy. Some day
he meant to stand for the burgh and her brothers were well-to-do
grocers in the town.

"Sir," she said in parting, "I hope you will not be too severe with
the young lady. Perhaps after all she was only a trifle impulsive!"

"Discipline must be maintained," said Mr. Davenant Carter sternly,
closing, however, at the same time the eyelid most remote from Mrs.
Baker of Laurel Villa.

"It shows what a humbug pa is," muttered Cissy, as she went upstairs;
"he knows very well it is bed-time anyway. I don't believe he is angry
one bit!"

When her father came in, he looked over at his wife. I am afraid he
deliberately winked, though in the interests of morality I trust I
may be mistaken. For how could a Justice of the Peace and a future
Member of Parliament demean himself to wink?

"Jane," he said to Mrs. Carter, "what does Cissy like most of all for
supper?"

"A little bit of chicken and bread-sauce done with broiled bacon--at
least I think so, dear--why do you ask?"

He called the tablemaid.

"Walbridge," he said sternly, "take that disgraceful girl up the
breast and both wings of a chicken, also three nice pieces of crisp
bacon, four new potatoes with butter-sauce, some raspberrytart with
thick cream and plenty of sugar--and a whole bottle of zoedone. But
mind you, _nothing else_, as you value your place--not another bite
for such a bold bad girl. This will teach her to go about the country
thrashing boys two years older than herself!"

He looked over across the table at his son.

"Let this be a lesson to you, sir," he said, frowning sternly at him.

"Yes, sir," said Sammy meekly, winking in his turn very confidentially
at a fly which was having a free wash and brush-up on the edge of the
fingerbowl, after completing the round of the dishes on the dinner
table.




CHAPTER XXIV.

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME--AND ENDS THERE.


Now all this has nothing to do with the story, except to show what
sort of a girl Cissy Carter was, and how she differed from Prissy
Smith--who in these circumstances would certainly have gone home and
prayed that God would in time make Wedgwood Baker a better boy,
instead of tackling missionary work on the spot with her knuckles as
Cissy Carter did.

It was several days later, and the flag of the Smoutchy boys still
flew defiantly over the battlements of the castle. The great General
was growing discouraged, for in little more than a week his father
might return from London, and would doubtless take up the matter
himself. Then, with the coming of policemen and the putting up of
fences and notice-boards, all romance would be gone forever. Besides
which, most of the town boys would have to go back to school, and the
Carters' governess and their own would be returning to annoy them with
lessons, and still more uncalled for aggravations as to manners.

Cissy Carter had given Sammy the slip, and started to come over by
herself to Windy Standard. It was the afternoon, and she came past the
gipsy encampment which Mr. Picton Smith had found on some unenclosed
land on the other side of the Edam Water, and which, spite of the
remonstrances of his brother-landlords, he had permitted to remain
there.

The permanent Ishmaelitish establishment consisted of about a dozen
small huts, some entirely constructed of rough stone, others of turf
with only a stone interposed here and there; but all had mud chimneys,
rough doorways, and windows glazed with the most extraordinary
collection of old glass, rags, wisps of straw, and oiled cloth. Dogs
barked hoarsely and shrilly according to their kind, ragged clothes
fluttered on extemporised lines, or made a parti-coloured patch-work
on the grass and on the gorse bushes which grew all along the bank.
There were also a score of tents and caravans dotted here and there
about the rough ground. Half-a-dozen swarthy lads rose silently and
stared after Cissy as she passed.

A tall limber youth sitting on a heap of stones examining a dog's
back, looked up and scowled as she came by. Cissy saw an unhealed
wound and stopped.

"Let me look at him," she said, reaching out her hand for the white
fox-terrier.

"Watch out, miss," said the lad, "he's nasty with the sore. He'll bite
quick as mustard!"

"He won't bite me," said Cissy, taking up the dog calmly, which after
a doubtful sniff submitted to be handled without a murmur.

"This should be thoroughly washed, and have some boracic ointment put
on it at once," said Cissy, with the quick emphasis of an expert.

"Ain't got none o' the stuff," said the youth sullenly, "nor can't
afford to buy it. Besides, who's to wash him first off, and him in a
temper like that?"

"Come over with me to Oaklands and I'll get you some ointment. I'll
wash him myself in a minute."

The boy whistled.

"That's a good 'un," he said, "likely thing me to go to Oaklands!"

"And why?" said Cissy; "it's my father's place. I've just come from
there."

"Then your father's a beak, and I ain't going a foot--not if I know
it," said the lad.

"A what--oh! you mean a magistrate--so he is. Well, then, if you feel
like that about it I'll run over by myself, and sneak some ointment
from the stables."

And with a careless wave of the hand, a pat on the head and a "Poo'
fellow then" to the white fox-terrier, she was off.

The youth cast his voice over his shoulders to a dozen companions who
were hiding in the broom behind. His face and tone were both full of
surprise and admiration.

[Illustration: "'LET ME LOOK AT HIM,' SHE SAID."]

"Say, chaps, did you hear her? She said she'd 'sneak' the ointment
from the stables. I tell 'ee what, she'll be a rare good plucked one
that. And her a beak's daughter! Her mother mun ha' been a piece!"

It was half-an-hour before Cissy got back with the pot of boracic
dressing and some lint.

"I had to wait till the coachman had gone to his tea," she explained,
"and then send the stable boy with a message to the village to get him
out of the way."

The youth on the stone heap secretly signalled his delight to the
appreciative audience hiding in the broom bushes.

Then Cissy ordered him to get her some warm water, which he brought
from one of the kettles swinging on the birchen tripods scattered here
and there about the encampment.

Whereupon, taking the fox-terrier firmly on her knee and turning up
the skirt of her dress, she washed away all the dirt and matted hair,
cleansing the wound thoroughly.

The poor beast only made a faint whining sound at intervals. Then she
applied the antiseptic dressing, and bound the lint tightly down with
a cincture about the animal. She fitted his neck with a neat collar of
her own invention, made out of the wicker covering of a Chianti wine
flask which she brought with her from Oaklands.

"There," she said, "that will keep him from biting at it, and you must
see that he doesn't scratch off the bandage. I'll be passing
to-morrow and will drop in. Here's the pot of ointment. Put some more
on in the morning and some again at night, and he will be all right in
a day or two."

"Thank'ee, miss," said the lad, touching his cap with the natural
courtesy which is inherent in the best blood of his race. "I don't
mean to forget, you be sure."

Cissy waved her hand to him gaily, as she went off towards Windy
Standard. Then all at once she stopped.

"By the way, what is your name? Whom shall I ask for if you are not
about to-morrow?"

"Billy Blythe," he said, after a moment's pause to consider whether
the daughter of a magistrate was to be trusted; "but I'll be here
to-morrow right enough!"

"Why did you tell the beak's daughter your name, Bill, you blooming
Johnny?" asked a companion. "You'll get thirty days for that sure!"

"Shut up, Fish Lee," said the owner of the dog; "the girl is main
right. D'ye think she'd ha' said 'sneaked' if she wasn't. G'way,
Bacon-chump!"

Cissy Carter took the road to Windy Standard with a good conscience.
She was not troubled about the "sneaking," though she hoped that the
coachman would not miss that pot of ointment.

At the foot of the avenue, just where it joined the dusty road to the
town of Edam, she met Sir Toady Lion. He had his arms full of valuable
sparkling jewellery, or what in the distance looked like it as the sun
shone upon some winking yellow metal.

Toady Lion began talking twenty to the dozen as soon as ever he came
within Cissy's range.

"Oo!" he cried, "what 'oo fink? Father sented us each a great big
half-crown from London--all to spend. And we have spended it."

"Well," said Cissy genially, "and what did you buy?"

"Us all wented down to Edam and boughted--oh! yots of fings."

"Show me what you've bought, Toady Lion! I want to see! How much money
had you, did you say?"

Toady Lion sat plump down in the thickest dust of the road, as he
always did just wherever he happened to be at the time. If there
chanced to be a pool there or a flower-bed--why, so much the worse.
But whenever Toady Lion wanted to sit down, he sat down. Here,
however, there was only the dry dust of the road and a brown smatter
of last year's leaves. The gallant knight was in a meditative mood and
inclined to moralise.

"Money," said Toady Lion thoughtfully, "well, dere's the money that
you get gived you, and wot Janet sez you muss put in your money-box.
That's no good! Money-box locked! Janet keeps money-box. 'Get money
when you are big,' she sez--rubbage, I fink--shan't want it then--lots
and lots in trowsies' pocket then, gold sixpences and fings."

Toady Lion's eyes were dreamy and glorious, as if the angels were
whispering to him, and he saw unspeakable things,

"Then there's miss'nary money in a round box wif a slit on the top.
That's lots better! Sits on mantlepiece in dining-room. Can get it out
wif slimmy-jimmy knife when nobody's looking. Hugh John showed me how.
Prissy says boys who grab miss'nary's pennies won't not go to heaven,
but Hugh John, he says--yes. 'Cause why miss'nary's money is for bad
wicked people to make them good. Then if it is wicked to take
miss'nary money, the money muss be meaned for us--to do good to me and
Hugh John. Hugh John finks so. Me too!"

Toady Lion spoke in short sentences with pauses between, Cissy
meantime nodding appreciation.

"Yes, I know," she said meditatively, "a thinbladed kitchen knife is
best."

But Sir Toady Lion had started out on the track of Right and Wrong,
and was intent on running them down with his usual slow persistence.

"And then the miss'nary money is weally-weally our money, 'cause Janet
_makes_ us put it in. Onst Hugh John tried metal buttons off of his
old serge trowsies. But Janet she found out. And he got smacked. An'
nen, us only takes a penny out when us is _tony-bloke_!"

"Is which? Oh, stone-broke," laughed Cissy Carter, sitting down beside
Toady Lion; "who taught you to say that word?"

"Hugh John," said the small boy wistfully; "him and me tony-bloke
all-ee-time, all-ee-ways, all-ee-while!"

"Does Prissy have any of--the missionary money?" said Cissy; "I
should!"

"No," said Toady Lion sadly; "don't you know? Our Prissy's awful good,
juss howwid! She likes goin' to church, an' washing, an' having to
wear gloves. Girls is awful funny."

"They are," said Cissy Carter promptly. The funniness of he

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