f the
gorse, his wooden rifle on his shoulder, a smile of proud triumph on
his richly freckled face. He stood over the fallen Twins; and his
smile of triumph changed to a scowl of fiendish ferocity.

"Ha! Ha! Shot through the heads!" he cried. "Their bones will bleach
in the pathless forest while their scalps hang in the wigwam of Red
Bear the terror of the Cherokees!"

Then he scalped the Twins with a formidable but wooden knife. Then he
took from his knickerbockers pocket a tattered and dirty note-book, an
inconceivable note-book (it was the only thing to curb the exuberant
imagination of Erebus) made an entry in it, and said in a tone of
lively satisfaction: "You're only one game ahead."

"I thought we were three," said Erebus, rising.

"They're down in the book," said Wiggins; firmly; and his bright blue
eyes were very stern.

"Well, we shall have to spend a whole afternoon getting well ahead of
you again," said Erebus, shaking out her dark curls.

Wiggins waged a deadly war with the Twins. He ambushed and scalped
them; they ambushed and scalped him. Seeing that they had already
passed their thirteenth birthday, it was a great condescension on their
part to play with a boy of ten; and they felt it. But Wiggins was a
favored friend; and the game filled intervals between sterner deeds.

The Terror handed Wiggins an apple; and the three of them moved swiftly
on across the common. Wiggins was one of those who spurn the earth.
Now and again, for obscure but profound reasons, he would suddenly
spring into the air and proceed by leaps and bounds.

Once when he slowed down to let them overtake him, he said, "The game
isn't really fair; you're two to one."

"You keep very level," said the Terror politely.

"Yes; it's my superior astuteness," said Wiggins sedately.

"Goodness! What words you use!" said Erebus in a somewhat jealous tone.

"It's being so much with my father; you see, he has a European
reputation," Wiggins explained.

"Yes, everybody says that. But what is a European reputation?" said
Erebus in a captious tone.

"Everybody in Europe knows him," said Wiggins; and he spurned the earth.

They called him Wiggins because his name was Rupert. It seemed to them
a name both affected and ostentatious. Besides, crop it as you might,
his hair _would_ assume the appearance of a mop.

They came out of the narrow path into a broader rutted cart-track to
see two figures coming toward them, eight