er a cage o' sticks.'

'Right,' said Dick; 'and there's a copse ahead. We'll halt in it, and
dry ourselves.'

They marched briskly for the copse, hung their haversacks on the branch
of a small, low-growing oak, and went to work at building a fire. It
was no easy task, but by searching in corners where thick bushes had
turned aside the worst of the downpour, they found odd handfuls of dry
stuff to start their blaze. Luckily the matches had been in Dick's
haversack, and were perfectly dry. A small dead larch afforded them
twigs and sticks when once the fire was started, and Dick chopped the
dead tree into small, handy pieces, and fed the flames with them. They
did not want a lasting fire, but a heap of hot ashes, and this would be
soonest afforded by small pieces of wood.

While Dick was busy with the tomahawk, Chippy attacked a thicket of
tall, straight-growing hazels with his knife, and cut an armful of the
springy rods. As soon as the fire burned down, the boys took the rods,
sharpened each end, took an end each, bent the rod into an arch, and
drove the ends deeply into the soft earth. In this way they had soon
covered the fire in, as it were, with a great basket. Then they
stripped off their sodden raiment, wrung it out, and spread it over the
bent hazel-rods to dry.

The excellence of the plan was soon manifest. Clouds of steam began to
rise from the wet clothes, and promised that they would soon be dry.
But it was cool after the rain, and the clothes hid the fire, and the
scouts felt no inclination to sit under a waggon, as their great leader
had done; they felt more inclined to move about a little to warm
themselves.

'It's jolly cold compared with the heat before the thunderstorm,' said
Dick.

'Ain't it?' said Chippy. 'I'll race ye to th' end o' the copse an'
back. That'll warm us a bit.'

'Right,' said Dick. 'Let's cut along where the larches and firs are.
It'll be fun sprinting over the fir-needles, and soft to the feet.
Where do we run to?'

'The big beech yonder,' said the Raven. 'I'll count. We'll go at
three.'

He counted, and away bounded the two scouts, racing at their fastest
for the big beech which they were to touch, then to return to their
fire.

Now, the last thing they expected to have was a witness of their race.
They believed that the copse was a lonely patch of wood on the lonely
heath. So it was, save for one house which lay just beyond the wood
where the ridge slope