you'd lend me that gun if I wanted it, wouldn't you?"

"Nay, nay; thou'rt not big enew to handle a goon, lad. Wait a bit for
that."

"Come along, Tom!" cried Dick. "And I say, Hicky, bring the
forge-bellows with you, so as we can blow out the will's light if he
comes after us."

"Haw--haw--haw--haw!" rang out like the bray of a donkey with a bad
cold; and Jacob, Hickathrift's lad, threw back his head, and roared till
his master gave him a sounding slap on the back, and made him close his
mouth with a snap, look serious, and go on with his work.

"Jacob laughs just like our old Solemn-un, sometimes," said Dick
merrily. "Come along!"

The morning was hot, but there was a fine brisk breeze from off the sea,
and the lads trudged on, talking of the progress of the drain, and the
way in which people grumbled.

"Father says that if he had known he wouldn't have joined the
adventure," said Tom.

"And my father says, the more opposition there is, the more he shall go
on, for if people don't know what's good for them they've got to be
taught. There's a beauty!"

Dick went off in chase of a swallow-tail butterfly--one of the beautiful
insects whose home was in the fens; but after letting him come very
close two or three times, the brightly-marked creature fluttered off
over the treacherous bog, a place of danger for followers, of safety for
the insect.

"That's the way they always serve you," said Dick.

"Well, you don't want it."

"No, I don't want it. Yes I do. Mr Marston said he should like a few
more to put in his case. I say, they are getting on with the drain,"
Dick continued, as he shaded his eyes and gazed at where, a mile away,
the engineer's men were wheeling peat up planks, and forming a long
embankment on either side of the cutting through the fen.

"Can you see Mr Marston from here?"

"Why, of course not! Come along! I say, Tom, you didn't think what old
Hicky said was true, did you?"

"N-n-no. Of course not."

"Why, you did. Ha--ha--ha! That's what father and Mr Marston call
superstition. I shall tell Mr Marston that you believe in
will-o'-the-wisps."

"Well, so do you. Who can help believing in them, when you see them
going along over the fen on the soft dark nights!"

"Oh, I believe in the lights," said Dick, "but that's all I don't
believe they shot Mr Marston and old Hicky; that's all stuff!"

"Well, somebody shot them, and my father says it ought to be found out
and stopped