encircled by the dauntless banner of our country. All the same, I think
if I had seen a band of youthful travellers in bitter distress about a
pig I should have tried to lend a helping hand and not sat roaring in
the hedge, no matter how the travellers and the pig might have been
dressed.

It was hotter than anyone would believe who has never had occasion to
hunt the pig when dressed for quite another part. The flour got out of
Oswald's hair into his eyes and his mouth. His brow was wet with what
the village blacksmith's was wet with, and not his fair brow alone. It
ran down his face and washed the red off in streaks, and when he
rubbed his eyes he only made it worse. Alice had to run holding the
equestrienne skirts on with both hands, and I think the brown-paper
boots bothered Noel from the first. Dora had her skirt over her arm and
carried the topper in her hand. It was no use to tell ourselves it was a
wild boar hunt--we were long past that.

At last we met a man who took pity on us. He was a kind-hearted man. I
think, perhaps, he had a pig of his own--or, perhaps, children. Honour
to his name!

He stood in the middle of the road and waved his arms. The pig
right-wheeled through a gate into a private garden and cantered up the
drive. We followed. What else were we to do, I should like to know?

The Learned Black Pig seemed to know its way. It turned first to the
right and then to the left, and emerged on a lawn.

'Now, all together!' cried Oswald, mustering his failing voice to give
the word of command. 'Surround him!--cut off his retreat!'

We almost surrounded him. He edged off towards the house.

'Now we've got him!' cried the crafty Oswald, as the pig got on to a bed
of yellow pansies close against the red house wall.

All would even then have been well, but Denny, at the last, shrank from
meeting the pig face to face in a manly way. He let the pig pass him,
and the next moment, with a squeak that said 'There now!' as plain as
words, the pig bolted into a French window. The pursuers halted not.
This was no time for trivial ceremony. In another moment the pig was a
captive. Alice and Oswald had their arms round him under the ruins of a
table that had had teacups on it, and around the hunters and their prey
stood the startled members of a parish society for making clothes for
the poor heathen, that that pig had led us into the very midst of. They
were reading a missionary report or something when we ran o