s occurred.

There is a ruined church about two miles from Lymchurch, and when we got
close to that we lost sight of the red coats, so we stopped on the
little bridge that is near there to reconnoitre.

The soldiers had vanished.

'Well, here's a go!' said Dicky.

'It _is_ a wild-goose chase,' said Noel. 'I shall make a piece of poetry
about it. I shall call the title the "Vanishing Reds, or, the Soldiers
that were not when you got there."'

'You shut up!' said Oswald, whose eagle eye had caught a glimpse of
scarlet through the arch of the ruin.

None of the others had seen this. Perhaps you will think I do not say
enough about Oswald's quickness of sight, so I had better tell you that
is only because Oswald is me, and very modest. At least, he tries to
be, because he knows it is what a true gentleman ought to.

'They're in the ruins,' he went on. 'I expect they're going to have an
easy and a pipe--out of the wind.'

'I think it's very mysterious,' said Noel. 'I shouldn't wonder if
they're going to dig for buried treasure. Let's go and see.'

'No,' said Oswald, who, though modest, is thoughtful. 'If we do they'll
stop digging, or whatever they're doing. When they've gone away, we'll
go and see if the ground is scratched about.'

So we delayed where we were, but we saw no more scarlet.

In a little while a dull-looking man in brown came by on a bicycle. He
stopped and got off.

'Seen a couple of Tommies about here, my lad?' he said to Oswald.

Oswald does not like being called anybody's lad, especially that kind of
man's; but he did not want to spoil the review, or field-day, or
sham-fight, or whatever it might be, so he said:

'Yes; they're up in the ruins.'

'You don't say so!' said the man. 'In uniform, I suppose? Yes, of
course, or you wouldn't have known they were soldiers. Silly cuckoos!'

He wheeled his bicycle up the rough lane that leads to the old ruin.

'It can't be buried treasure,' said Dicky.

'I don't care if it is,' said Oswald. 'We'll see what's happening. I
don't mind spoiling _his_ sport. "My ladding" me like that!'

So we followed the man with the bicycle. It was leaning against the
churchyard gate when we got there. The man off it was going up to the
ruin, and we went after him.

He did not call out to the soldiers, and we thought that odd; but it
didn't make us think where it might have made us if we had had any
sense. He just went creeping about, looking behind walls and ins