tle patience with practical jokes, and especially
disliked to give any cause of offence to his neighbours, so he insisted
upon marching both the boys off then and there to make their apologies
to Captain Vernon.

"And if he likes to horse-whip you, he may do so," he declared. "And
I'll stand by and watch it done, and say you deserve it for a couple of
mischievous young jackanapes!"

To the great surprise of all concerned, however, the old captain "turned
up trumps". Bursting into a roar of laughter, he declared he had had the
best of the joke, shook the boys warmly by the hand, and proclaimed an
amnesty. He even did more. Next day he sent us a beautiful basketful of
his best wall-apricots as a peace-offering, and permission to pick
blackberries in his fields if we chose.

"It's ever so decent of the old chap," said George. "We certainly did
rag him rather hard. But I've promised to catch the moles in his
garden--I'm a capital hand at setting mole-traps--and he says if I like
to come and scare the birds from his autumn peas, he'll lend me an
air-gun, and I can blaze away all day if I want."

It was a very satisfactory conclusion to the feud, and I think the boys
were glad it had ended thus; for by the next holidays the poor old
captain's cough no longer resounded through the village, his garden knew
him no more, and other and younger faces looked out from his
red-curtained windows.

CHAPTER VII

TIT FOR TAT

"All in the nick
To play some trick
And frolic it with Ho! ho! ho!"

Though the natural-history portion of the Marshlands Museum grew so
rapidly that it threatened to overflow the cabinet, there were very few
antiquities in the collection, a Roman lamp, an Egyptian scarab, a few
old coins, and a Georgian snuff-box making up the whole of the scanty
store.

"I wish we could get a few really ancient things," said Cathy one day,
as she dusted and tidied the shelves. "Arrow-heads, I mean, and
spindle-whorls, and bronze brooches, and all those delightful finds you
hear of people digging up out of barrows. I'm sure there ought to be
some on these moors if we only knew where to look for them."

"Go and dig, then," suggested Dick. "You don't know what you might come
across."

"Why shouldn't I?" said Cathy. "There's a little round green mound just
in the corner of the field near the stone bridge that, I always think,
looks as if it ought to have something inside it. I shall certainly try