ide
arches, as though he was playing at hide-and-seek. There is a mound in
the middle of the ruin, where stones and things have fallen during dark
ages, and the grass has grown all over them. We stood on the mound, and
watched the bicycling stranger nosing about like a ferret.

There is an archway in that ruin, and a flight of steps goes down--only
five steps--and then it is all stopped up with fallen stones and earth.
The stranger stopped at last at this arch, and stooped forward with his
hands on his knees, and looked through the arch and down the steps.
Then he said suddenly and fiercely:

'Come out of it, will you?'

And the soldiers came. I wouldn't have. They were two to his one. They
came cringing out like beaten dogs. The brown man made a sort of bound,
and next minute the two soldiers were handcuffed together, and he was
driving them before him like sheep.

'Back you go the same way as what you come,' he said.

And then Oswald saw the soldiers' faces, and he will never forget what
they looked like.

He jumped off the mound, and ran to where they were.

'What have they done?' he asked the handcuffer.

'Deserters,' said the man. 'Thanks to you, my lad, I got 'em as easy as
kiss your hand.'

Then one of the soldiers looked at Oswald. He was not very old--about as
big as a fifth-form boy. And Oswald answered what the soldier looked at
him.

'I'm _not_ a sneak,' he said. 'I wouldn't have told if I'd known. If
you'd told me, instead of saying to mind my own business I'd have helped
you.'

The soldier didn't answer, but the bicycle man did.

'Then you'd 'a helped yourself into the stone jug, my lad,' said he.
'Help a dirty deserter? You're young enough to know better. Come along,
you rubbish!'

And they went.

When they were gone Dicky said:

'It's very rum. I hate cowards. And deserters are cowards. I don't see
why we feel like this.'

Alice and Dora and Noel were now discovered to be in tears.

'Of course we did right to tell. Only when the soldier looked at me ...'
said Oswald.

'Yes,' said Dicky, 'that's just it.'

In deepest gloom the party retraced its steps.

As we went, Dora said with sniffs:

'I suppose it was the bicycle man's duty.'

'Of course,' said Oswald, 'but it wasn't _our_ duty. And I jolly well
wish we hadn't!'

'And such a beautiful day, too,' said Noel, sniffing in his turn.

It _was_ beautiful. The afternoon had been dull, but now the sun was
shining flat across