ert sulkily. "But I've got a lump as big as a
cricket ball over my eye."

Anthea patiently offered a dust-coloured handkerchief, and Robert bathed
his wounds in silence. "Now, Squirrel," she said.

"Well then--let's just play bandits, or forts, or soldiers, or any of
the old games. We're dead sure to think of something if we try not to.
You always do."

The others consented. Bandits was hastily chosen for the game. "It's as
good as anything else," said Jane gloomily. It must be owned that
Robert was at first but a half-hearted bandit, but when Anthea had
borrowed from Martha the red-spotted handkerchief in which the keeper
had brought her mushrooms that morning, and had tied up Robert's head
with it so that he could be the wounded hero who had saved the bandit
captain's life the day before, he cheered up wonderfully. All were soon
armed. Bows and arrows slung on the back look well; and umbrellas and
cricket stumps through the belt give a fine impression of the wearer's
being armed to the teeth. The white cotton hats that men wear in the
country nowadays have a very brigandish effect when a few turkey's
feathers are stuck in them. The Lamb's mail-cart was covered with a
red-and-blue checked table-cloth, and made an admirable baggage-wagon.
The Lamb asleep inside it was not at all in the way. So the banditti set
out along the road that led to the sand-pit.

"We ought to be near the Sammyadd," said Cyril, "in case we think of
anything suddenly."

It is all very well to make up your minds to play bandit--or chess, or
ping-pong, or any other agreeable game--but it is not easy to do it with
spirit when all the wonderful wishes you can think of, or can't think
of, are waiting for you round the corner. The game was dragging a
little, and some of the bandits were beginning to feel that the others
were disagreeable things, and were saying so candidly, when the baker's
boy came along the road with loaves in a basket. The opportunity was not
one to be lost.

"Stand and deliver!" cried Cyril.

"Your money or your life!" said Robert.

And they stood on each side of the baker's boy. Unfortunately, he did
not seem to enter into the spirit of the thing at all. He was a baker's
boy of an unusually large size. He merely said--

"Chuck it now, d'ye hear!" and pushed the bandits aside most
disrespectfully.

Then Robert lassoed him with Jane's skipping-rope, and instead of going
round his shoulders, as Robert intended, it went r