you."

As Albert's uncle had offered no advice, Oswald disdained to ask him for
any.

Alice got up too, and she and Oswald went into the garden, and sat down
on the bench under the quince-tree, and wished they had never tried to
have a private lark of their very own with the Antiquities--"A Private
Sale," Albert's uncle called it afterwards. But regrets, as nearly
always happens, were vain. Something had to be done.

But what?

Oswald and Alice sat in silent desperateness, and the voices of the gay
and careless others came to them from the lawn, where, heartless in
their youngness, they were playing tag. I don't know how they could.
Oswald would not like to play tag when his brother and sister were in a
hole, but Oswald is an exception to some boys. But Dicky told me
afterwards he thought it was only a joke of Albert's uncle's.

The dusk grew dusker, till you could hardly tell the quinces from the
leaves, and Alice and Oswald still sat exhausted with hard thinking, but
they could not think of anything. And it grew so dark that the moonlight
began to show.

Then Alice jumped up--just as Oswald was opening his mouth to say the
same thing--and said, "Of course--how silly! I know. Come on in,
Oswald."

And they went on in.

Oswald was still far too proud to consult any one else. But he just
asked carelessly if Alice and he might go into Maidstone the next day to
buy some wire-netting for a rabbit-hutch, and to see after one or two
things.

Albert's uncle said certainly. And they went by train with the bailiff
from the farm, who was going in about some sheep-dip and to buy pigs. At
any other time Oswald would not have been able to bear to leave the
bailiff without seeing the pigs bought. But now it was different. For he
and Alice had the weight on their bosoms of being thieves without having
meant it--and nothing, not even pigs, had power to charm the young but
honorable Oswald till that stain had been wiped away.

So he took Alice to the Secretary of the Maidstone Antiquities' house,
and Mr. Turnbull was out, but the maid-servant kindly told us where the
President lived, and ere long the trembling feet of the unfortunate
brother and sister vibrated on the spotless gravel of Camperdown Villa.

When they asked, they were told that Mr. Longchamps was at home. Then
they waited, paralyzed with undescribed emotions, in a large room with
books and swords and glass book-cases with rotten-looking odds and ends
in them