in their places--and drop the whole
thing. I want to go and read to Dicky."

Oswald has a spirit that no reverses can depreciate. He hates to be
beaten. But he gave in to Alice, as the others said so too, and we went
out to collect the performing troop and sort it out into its proper
places.

Alas! we came too late. In the interest we had felt about whether Mrs.
Pettigrew was the abject victim of burglars or not we had left both
gates open again. The old horse--I mean the trained elephant from
Venezuela--was there all right enough. The dogs we had beaten and tied
up after the first act, when the intrepid sheep bounded, as it says in
the programme. The two white pigs were there, but the donkey was gone.
We heard his hoofs down the road, growing fainter and fainter, in the
direction of the "Rose and Crown." And just round the gate-post we saw a
flash of red and white and blue and black that told us, with dumb
signification, that the pig was off in exactly the opposite direction.
Why couldn't they have gone the same way? But no, one was a pig and the
other was a donkey, as Denny said afterwards.

Daisy and H. O. started after the donkey; the rest of us, with one
accord, pursued the pig--I don't know why. It trotted quietly down the
road; it looked very black against the white road, and the ends on the
top, where the Union Jack was tied, bobbed brightly as it trotted. At
first we thought it would be easy to catch up to it. This was an error.

When we ran faster it ran faster; when we stopped it stopped and looked
round at us, and nodded. (I dare say you won't swallow this, but you may
safely. It's as true as true, and so's all that about the goat. I give
you my sacred word of honor.) I tell you the pig nodded as much as to
say:

[Illustration: "HE SAT DOWN IN THE HEDGE TO LAUGH PROPERLY"]

"Oh yes. You think you will, but you won't!" and then as soon as we
moved again off it went. That pig led us on and on, o'er miles and miles
of strange country. One thing, it did keep to the roads. When we met
people, which wasn't often, we called out to them to help us, but they
only waved their arms and roared with laughter. One chap on a bicycle
almost tumbled off his machine, and then he got off it and propped it
against a gate and sat down in the hedge to laugh properly. You remember
Alice was still dressed up as the gay equestrienne in the dressing-table
pink and white, with rosy garlands, now very droopy, and she had no
sto