"Go then," she said, with a gesture of despair. "Go. I have nothing
more to say."

Elizabeth was tearing down the garden path before she had finished. To
be cast off as hopeless was anguish, but it was nothing to the horror
of being kept at home to be made genteel. In a moment more, with
shrieks of joy, she was flying down the lane, towards two disgusted
looking boys reluctantly awaiting her at the edge of the mill-pond.

CHAPTER V

A ROYAL TITLE

"The Slash" was the name given to a piece of partially cleared land
lying between the mill-pond and Sandy McLachlan's clearing. The timber
on it had been cut down and it had grown up in a wild luxuriance of
underbrush and berry bushes. The latter had from time to time been
cleared away in patches, and here and there between the fallen
tree-trunks were stretches of green grass, where the wild strawberries
grew. The Slash was the most delightful place in which to go roaming
at large and give oneself up to a buccaneer life. On schooldays,
though the Gordons passed through it morning and afternoon, there was
little opportunity to linger over its treasures. But the memory of its
cool, flowery glades, its sunny uplands, its wealth of berries or wild
grapes or hazel-nuts as the season of each came round, always beckoned
the children on holidays. The Gordon boys had long used it as a
playground. Here they could indulge in games of wild Indians and
pirates, setting fire to the brush-wood, cutting down trees, and
engaging in such other escapades as were not sufficiently genteel to be
carried on under their aunt's eye. So on holidays thither they always
repaired, either with the excuse of accompanying Charles Stuart to the
mill, or carrying a pail or a fishing-rod to give the proper coloring
to their departure.

But on this first summer holiday John and Charles Stuart found
themselves, upon setting out, hampered by a much worse encumbrance than
a berry-pail.

"Lizzie Gordon!" said her brother sternly, "you ain't comin'."

"I am so!" declared Elizabeth, secure in permission from the powers at
home. "Aunt said I could."

John looked at Charles Stuart, and Charles Stuart winked at John and
nodded towards the opposite edge of the pond. Elizabeth knew only too
well that those significant glances meant, "We'll run away from her and
hide as soon as we're into The Slash."

"No, you can't then," she cried triumphantly, just as though they had
spoken. "I can beat