saw that it was the same to
Dicky's.

'I feel pretty sick,' he said. 'Let's go home.'

'They say the whole eleven ricks are bound to go,' said Dicky, 'with the
wind the way it is.'

'_We're_ bound to go,' said Oswald.

'Where?' inquired the less thoughtful Dicky.

'To prison,' said his far-seeing brother, turning away and beginning to
walk towards the bicycles.

'We can't be sure it was our balloon,' said Dicky, following.

'Pretty average,' said Oswald bitterly.

'But no one would know it was us if we held our tongues.'

'We can't hold our tongues,' Oswald said; 'if we do someone else will be
blamed, as sure as fate. You didn't hear what that woman said about
insurance money.'

'We might wait and see if anyone _does_ get into trouble, and _then_
come forward,' said Dicky.

And Oswald owned they might do that, but his heart was full of despair
and remorse.

Just as they got to their bikes a man met them.

'All lost, I suppose?' he said, jerking his thumb at the blazing
farmyard.

'Not all,' said Dicky; 'we saved the furniture and the wool and
things----'

The man looked at us, and said heavily:

'Very kind of you, but it was all insured.'

'Look here,' said Oswald earnestly, 'don't you say that to anyone else.'

'Eh?' said the man.

'If you do, they're safe to think you set fire to it yourself!'

He stared, then he frowned, then he laughed, and said something about
old heads on young shoulders, and went on.

We went on, too, in interior gloom, that only grew gloomier as we got
nearer and nearer home.

We held a council that night after the little ones had gone to bed. Dora
and Alice seemed to have been crying most of the day. They felt a little
better when they heard that no one had been burned to death. Alice told
me she had been thinking all day of large families burned to little
cinders. But about telling of the fire-balloon we could not agree.

Alice and Oswald thought we ought. But Dicky said 'Wait,' and Dora said
'Write to father about it.'

Alice said:

'No; it doesn't make any difference about our not being sure whether our
balloon _was_ the cause of destruction. I _expect_ it was, and, anyway,
we ought to own up.'

'I feel so too,' said Oswald; 'but I do wish I knew how long in prison
you got for it.'

We went to bed without deciding anything.

And very early in the morning Oswald woke, and he got up and looked out
of the window, and there was a great cloud of smoke still