acquiescently,
therefore, this person returned in their midst, and receiving a new
weapon, his own club having been absent-mindedly mislaid, he again set
forth warily to the encounter.

Yet in this he did not altogether neglect a discreet prudence. The
sympathetic person to whom he was indebted for the pointed allusion had
specifically declared that they who used their feet with the desperate
savagery of baffled spectres guarded the nearer limits of their
position, the intention of his timely hint assuredly being that I should
seek to approach from the opposite end, where, doubtless, the more
humane and conciliatory grass-hoppers were assembled. Thus guided I now
set forth in a widely-circuitous direction, having the point where I
meant to open an attack clearly before my eyes, yet seeking to deliver
a more effective onslaught by reaching it to some extent unperceived and
to this end creeping forward in the protecting shadow of the long grass
and untrimmed herbage.

Whether the one already referred to had incapably failed to express his
real meaning, or whether he was tremulous by nature and inordinately
self-deficient, concerns the narration less than the fact that he had
admittedly produced a state of things largely in excess of the actual.
There is no longer any serviceable pretext for maintaining that
those guarding any point of their position were other than mild and
benevolent, while the only edged weapon displayed was one courteously
produced to aid this person's ineffectual struggles to extricate himself
when, by some obscure movement, he had most ignobly entangled his
pigtail about the claws of his sandal.

Ignorant of this, the true state of things, I was still advancing subtly
when one wearing the emblems of our band appeared from among the brown
insects and came towards me. "Courage!" I exclaimed in a guarded tone,
raising my head cautiously and rejoiced to find that I should not be
alone. "Here is one clad in green bearing succour, who will, moreover,
obstinately defend his stumps to the last extremity."

"That's right," replied the opportune person agreeably; "we need a few
like that. But do get up on your hind legs and come along, there's a
good fellow. You can play at bears in the nursery when we get back, if
you want."

Certainly one can simulate the movements of wild animals in a
market-garden if the impersonation is thought to be desirable, yet
the reasonable analogy of the saying is elusive in