the Terror took the cigarette-case from
the dressing-table; they came quietly down the stairs and out of the
inn.

As they turned up the street the Terror said with modest if somewhat
vengeful triumph: "There! you see things _do_ occur to us." Then with
his usual scrupulous fairness he added: "But it was Wiggins who set us
going."

"I'm an ally; and he called me Freckles," said Wiggins vengefully; and
once more he spurned the earth.

On their way home, half-way up the lane, where the trees arched most
thickly overhead, they came to a patch of deepish mud which was too
sheltered to have dried after the heavy rain of the day before.

"Mind the mud, Wiggins," said Erebus, mindful of his carelessness in
the matter.

Wiggins walked gingerly along the side of it and said: "It wouldn't be
a nice place to fall down in, would it?"

The Terror went on a few paces, stopped short, laughed a hard, sinister
little laugh, and said: "Wiggins, you're a treasure!"

"What is it? What is it now?" said Erebus quickly.

"A little job of my own. It wouldn't do for you and Wiggins to have a
hand in it, he'll swear so," said the Terror.

"Who'll swear?" said Erebus.

"The Cruncher. And you're a girl and Wiggins is too young to hear such
language," said the Terror.

"Rubbish!" said Erebus sharply. "Tell us what it is."

The Terror shook his head.

"It's a beastly shame! I ought to help--I always do," cried Erebus in
a bitterly aggrieved tone.

The Terror shook his head.

"All right," said Erebus. "Who wants to help in a stupid thing like
that? But all the same you'll go and make a silly mull of it without
me--you always do."

"You jolly well wait and see," said the Terror with calm confidence.

Erebus was still muttering darkly about piggishness when they reached
the house.

They went into the drawing-room in a body and found Captain Baster
still talking to their mother, in the middle, indeed, of a long story
illustrating his prowess in a game of polo, on two three-hundred-guinea
and one three-hundred-and-fifty-guinea ponies. He laid great stress on
the prices he had paid for them.

When it came to an end, the Terror gave him his cigarette-case.

Mrs. Dangerfield observed this example of the thoughtfulness of her
offspring with an air of doubtful surprise.

Captain Baster took the cigarette-case and said with hearty jocularity:
"Thank you, Error--thank you. But why didn't you bring it to me,
Terebus? Then