to keep up
for excitement.

"Of course there is," I replied. "We're just in time. Come on!"

Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet---- The pigs and poultry,
with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little concerning
the peace that in these latter days lapped this sea-girt realm. In the
schoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; and
did not legends of the country-side inform us how Cavaliers had once
galloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in the
village? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their business
was not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed
hard on their tracks.

"Won't Edward be sorry," puffed Harold, "that he's begun that beastly
Latin?"

It did, indeed, seem hard. Edward, the most martial spirit of us all,
was drearily conjugating AMO (of all verbs) between four walls; while
Selina, who ever thrilled ecstatic to a red coat, was struggling with
the uncouth German tongue. "Age," I reflected, "carries its penalties."

It was a grievous disappointment to us that the troop passed through the
village unmolested. Every cottage, I pointed out to my companions, ought
to have been loopholed, and strongly held. But no opposition was offered
to the soldiers, who, indeed, conducted themselves with a recklessness
and a want of precaution that seemed simply criminal.

At the last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered across
me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ordered her back.

The small maiden, docile but exceedingly dolorous, dragged reluctant
feet homewards, heavy at heart that she was to behold no stout fellows
slain that day; but Harold and I held steadily on, expecting every
instant to see the environing hedges crackle and spit forth the leaden
death.

"Will they be Indians?" inquired my brother (meaning the enemy); "or
Roundheads, or what?"

I reflected. Harold always required direct, straightforward answers--not
faltering suppositions.

"They won't be Indians," I replied at last; "nor yet Roundheads. There
haven't been any Roundheads seen about here for a long time. They'll be
Frenchmen."

Harold's face fell. "All right," he said; "Frenchmen'll do; but I did
hope they'd be Indians."

"If they were going to be Indians," I explained, "I--I don't think I'd
go on. Because when Indians take you prisoner they scalp you first, and
then burn you at a stake. But Frenchmen don't do that sort of thin