LITMIR.BIZ

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see.'

      'No,' said Oswald, who, though modest, is thoughtful. 'If we do they'll stop digging, or whatever they're doing. When they've gone away, we'll go and see if the ground is scratched about.'

      So we delayed where we were, but we saw no more scarlet.

      In a little while a dull-looking man in brown came by on a bicycle. He stopped and got off.

      'Seen a couple of Tommies about here, my lad?' he said to Oswald.

      Oswald does not like being called anybody's lad, especially that kind of man's; but he did not want to spoil the review, or field-day, or sham-fight, or whatever it might be, so he said:

      'Yes; they're up in the ruins.'

      'You don't say so!' said the man. 'In uniform, I suppose? Yes, of course, or you wouldn't have known they were soldiers. Silly cuckoos!'

      He wheeled his bicycle up the rough lane that leads to the old ruin.

      'It can't be buried treasure,' said Dicky.

      'I don't care if it is,' said Oswald. 'We'll see what's happening. I don't mind spoiling his sport. "My ladding" me like that!'

      So we followed the man with the bicycle. It was leaning against the churchyard gate when we got there. The man off it was going up to the ruin, and we went after him.

      He did not call out to the soldiers, and we thought that odd; but it didn't make us think where it might have made us if we had had any sense. He just went creeping about, looking behind walls and inside arches, as though he was playing at hide-and-seek. There is a mound in the middle of the ruin, where stones and things have fallen during dark ages, and the grass has grown all over them. We stood on the mound, and watched the bicycling stranger nosing about like a ferret.

      There is an archway in that ruin, and a flight of steps goes down – only five steps – and then it is all stopped up with fallen stones and earth. The stranger stopped at last at this arch, and stooped forward with his hands on his knees, and looked through the arch and down the steps. Then he said suddenly and fiercely:

      'Come out of it, will you?'

      And the soldiers came. I wouldn't have. They were two to his one. They came cringing out like beaten dogs. The brown man made a sort of bound, and next minute the two soldiers were handcuffed together, and he was driving them before him like sheep.

      'Back you go the same way as what you come,' he said.

      And then Oswald saw the soldiers' faces, and he will never forget what they looked like.

      He jumped off the mound, and ran to where they were.

      'What have they done?' he asked the handcuffer.

      'Deserters,' said the man. 'Thanks to you, my lad, I got 'em as easy as kiss your hand.'

      Then one of the soldiers looked at Oswald. He was not very old – about as big as a fifth-form boy. And Oswald answered what the soldier looked at him.

      'I'm not a sneak,' he said. 'I wouldn't have told if I'd known. If you'd told me, instead of saying to mind my own business I'd have helped you.'

      The soldier didn't answer, but the bicycle man did.

      'Then you'd 'a helped yourself into the stone jug, my lad,' said he. 'Help a dirty deserter? You're young enough to know better. Come along, you rubbish!'

      And they went.

      When they were gone Dicky said:

      'It's very rum. I hate cowards. And deserters are cowards. I don't see why we feel like this.'

      Alice and Dora and Noël were now discovered to be in tears.

      'Of course we did right to tell. Only when the soldier looked at me …' said Oswald.

      'Yes,' said Dicky, 'that's just it.'

      In deepest gloom the party retraced its steps.

      As we went, Dora said with sniffs:

      'I suppose it was the bicycle man's duty.'

      'Of course,' said Oswald, 'but it wasn't our duty. And I jolly well wish we hadn't!'

      'And such a beautiful day, too,' said Noël, sniffing in his turn.

      It was beautiful. The afternoon had been dull, but now the sun was shining flat across the marshes, making everything look as if it had been covered all over with the best gold-leaf – marsh and trees, and roofs and stacks, and everything.

      That evening Noël wrote a poem about it all. It began:

      'Poor soldiers, why did you run away

      On such a beautiful, beautiful day?

      If you had run away in the rain,

      Perhaps they would never have found you again,

      Because then Oswald would not have been there

      To show the hunter the way to your lair.'

      Oswald would have licked him for that – only Noël is not very strong, and there is something about poets, however young, that makes it rather like licking a girl. So Oswald did not even say what he thought – Noël cries at the least thing. Oswald only said, 'Let's go down to our pigman.'

      And we all went except Noël. He never will go anywhere when in the midst of making poetry. And Alice stayed with him, and H. O. was in bed.

      We told the pigman all about the deserters, and about our miserable inside remorsefulness, and he said he knew just how we felt.

      'There's quite enough agin a pore chap that's made a bolt of it without the rest of us a-joinin' in,' he said. 'Not as I holds with deserting – mean trick I call it. But all the same, when the odds is that heavy – thousands to one – all the army and the navy and the pleece and Parliament and the King agin one pore silly bloke. You wouldn't 'a done it a purpose, I lay.'

      'Not much,' said Oswald in gloomy dejection. 'Have a peppermint? They're extra strong.'

      When the pigman had had one he went on talking.

      'There's a young chap, now,' he said, 'broke out of Dover Gaol. I 'appen to know what he's in for – nicked a four-pound cake, he did, off of a counter at a pastrycook's – Jenner's it was, in the High Street – part hunger, part playfulness. But even if I wasn't to know what he was lagged for, do you think I'd put the coppers on to him? Not me. Give a fellow a chance is what I say. But don't you grizzle about them there Tommies. P'raps it'll be the making of 'em in the end. A slack-baked pair as ever wore boots. I seed 'em. Only next time just you take and think afore you pipes up – see?'

      We said that we saw, and that next time we would do as he said. And we went home again. As we went Dora said:

      'But supposing it was a cruel murderer that had got loose, you ought to tell then.'

      'Yes,' said Dicky; 'but before you do tell you ought to be jolly sure it is a cruel murderer, and not a chap that's taken a cake because he was hungry. How do you know what you'd do if you were hungry enough?'

      'I shouldn't steal,' said Dora.

      'I'm not so sure,' said Dicky; and they argued about it all the way home, and before we got in it began to rain in torrents.

      Conversations about food always make you feel as though it was a very long time since you had had anything to eat. Mrs. Beale had gone home, of course, but we went into the larder. It is a generous larder. No lock, only a big wooden latch that pulls up with a string, like in Red Riding Hood. And the floor is clean damp red brick. It makes ginger-nuts soft if you put the bag on this floor. There was half a rhubarb pie, and there were meat turnovers with potato in them. Mrs. Beale is a thoughtful person, and I know many people much richer that are not nearly so thoughtful.

      We had a comfortable feast at the kitchen table, standing up to eat, like horses.

      Then we had to let Noël read us his piece of poetry about the soldier; he wouldn't have slept if we hadn't. It was very long, and it began as I have said, and ended up:

      'Poor soldiers, learn a lesson from

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