gracious, look there!" and we looked there, and where we were to
look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that
the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange
blobbiness of knobbly bumps along the top, that looked exactly like
human heads.

It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that
human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on
pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the
castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but
real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.

They were, in fact, the village children.

"Poor little Lazaruses!" said Mr. Red House.

"There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left," said Mrs. Bax.
"Shall we----?"

So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the
bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up
all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were
sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs,
and we were quite glad that they should have them--really and truly we
were, even H.O.!

They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would
choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little
you are other people's sort. So, after they had eaten all there was,
when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we
ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and
though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we
understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them
understand the very simplest thing.

But they could play all the ring games, and "Nuts and May," and "There
Came Three Knights"--and another one we had never heard of before. The
singing part begins:--

"Up and down the green grass,
This and that and thus,
Come along, my pretty maid,
And take a walk with us.
You shall have a duck, my dear,
And you shall have a drake,
And you shall have a handsome man
For your father's sake."

I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will
write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.

The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul--I expect it is but
seldom they are able to play, and the