f you are very grown-up, or very clever, I daresay you will now have
thought of a great many things. If you have you need not say anything,
especially if you're reading this aloud to anybody. It's no good putting
in what you think in this part, because none of us thought anything of
the kind at the time.

We simply stood in the road without any of your clever thoughts, filled
with shame and distress to think of what might happen owing to the
dragon's teeth being sown. It was a lesson to us never to sow seed
without being quite sure what sort it is. This is particularly true of
the penny packets, which sometimes do not come up at all, quite unlike
dragon's teeth.

Of course H. O. and Noel were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was
only fair.

'How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?' Dickie said.
'Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies
of dead English soldiers, I shouldn't wonder.'

'If they're the old Greek kind of dragon's-teeth soldiers, they ought to
fight each other to death,' Noel said; 'at least, if we had a helmet to
throw among them.'

But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be of no use for
H. O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to.
Denny said suddenly--

'Couldn't we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn't know the way to
Maidstone?'

Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown.

He said--

'Fetch all the tools out of your chest--Dicky go too, there's a good
chap, and don't let him cut his legs with the saw.' He did once,
tumbling over it. 'Meet us at the cross-roads, you know, where we had
the Benevolent Bar. Courage and dispatch, and look sharp about it.'

When they had gone we hastened to the crossroads, and there a great idea
occurred to Oswald. He used the forces at his command so ably that in
a very short time the board in the field which says 'No thoroughfare.
Trespassers will be prosecuted' was set up in the middle of the road to
Maidstone. We put stones, from a heap by the road, behind it to make it
stand up.

Then Dicky and Denny came back, and Dicky shinned up the sign-post and
sawed off the two arms, and we nailed them up wrong, so that it said 'To
Maidstone' on the Dover Road, and 'To Dover' on the road to Maidstone.
We decided to leave the Trespassers board on the real Maidstone road, as
an extra guard.

Then we settled to start at once to warn Maidstone.

Some