he Terror sadly.

"All that fuss about a little lead from the silly old belfry gutter!"
said Erebus bitterly.

"As if belfries wanted lead gutters. They could easily have put slates
in the place of the sheet of lead we took," said the Terror with equal
bitterness.

"Why can't they leave us alone? It quite spoils the country not to
have catapults," said Erebus, gazing with mournful eyes on the rich
autumn scene through which they moved.

The Twins had several grievances against their elders; but the loss of
their catapults was the bitterest. They had used those weapons to
enrich the simple diet which was all their mother's slender means
allowed them; on fortunate days they had enriched it in defiance of the
game laws. Keepers and farmers had made no secret of their suspicions
that this was the case: but the careful Twins never afforded them the
pleasure of adducing evidence in support of those suspicions. Then a
heavy thunderstorm revealed the fact that they had removed a sheet of
lead, which they had regarded as otiose, from the belfry gutter, to
cast it into bullets for their catapults; a consensus of the public
opinion of Little Deeping had demanded that they should be deprived of
them; and their mother, yielding to the demand, had forbidden them to
use them any longer.

The Twins always obeyed their mother; but they resented bitterly the
action of Little Deeping. It was, indeed, an ungrateful place, since
their exploits afforded its old ladies much of the carping conversation
they loved. In a bitter and vindictive spirit the Twins set themselves
to become the finest stone-throwers who ever graced a countryside; and
since they had every natural aptitude in the way of muscle and keenness
of eye, they were well on their way to realize their ambition. There
may, indeed, have been northern boys of thirteen who could outthrow the
Terror, but not a girl in England could throw a stone straighter or
harder than Erebus.

They came to a gate opening on to Little Deeping common; Erebus vaulted
it gracefully; the Terror, hampered by the bag of booty, climbed over
it (for the Twins it was always simpler to vault or climb over a gate
than to unlatch it and walk through) and took their way along a narrow
path through the gorse and bracken. They had gone some fifty yards,
when from among the bracken on their right a voice cried: "Bang-g-g!
Bang-g-g!"

The Twins fell to the earth and lay still; and Wiggins came out o