d ring on the point of his fork when he was digging potatoes,
and you know how we found two half-crowns ourselves once when we were
digging for treasure.

Oswald was taking his turn with the spade, and the others were sitting
on the gravel and telling him how to do it.

"Work with a will," Dicky said, yawning.

Alice said: "I wish we were in a book. People in books never dig without
finding something. I think I'd rather it was a secret passage than
anything."

Oswald stopped to wipe his honest brow ere replying.

"A secret's nothing when you've found it out. Look at the secret
staircase. It's no good, not even for hide-and-seek, because of its
squeaking. I'd rather have the pot of gold we used to dig for when we
were little." It was really only last year, but you seem to grow old
very quickly after you have once passed the prime of your youth, which
is at ten, I believe.

"How would you like to find the mouldering bones of Royalist soldiers
foully done to death by nasty Ironsides?" Noel asked, with his mouth
full of plum.

"If they were really dead it wouldn't matter," Dora said. "What I'm
afraid of is a skeleton that can walk about and catch at your legs when
you're going up-stairs to bed."

"Skeletons can't walk," Alice said in a hurry; "you know they can't,
Dora."

And she glared at Dora till she made her sorry she had said what she
had. The things you are frightened of, or even those you would rather
not meet in the dark, should never be mentioned before the little ones,
or else they cry when it comes to bedtime, and say it was because of
what you said.

"We sha'n't find anything. No jolly fear," said Dicky.

And just then my spade I was digging with struck on something hard, and
it felt hollow. I did really think for one joyful space that we had
found that pot of gold. But the thing, whatever it was, seemed to be
longish; longer, that is, than a pot of gold would naturally be. And as
I uncovered it I saw that it was not at all pot-of-gold-color, but like
a bone Pincher has buried. So Oswald said:

"It _is_ the skeleton."

The girls all drew back, and Alice said, "Oswald, I wish you wouldn't."

A moment later the discovery was unearthed, and Oswald lifted it up with
both hands.

"It's a dragon's head," Noel said, and it certainly looked like it. It
was long and narrowish and bony, and with great yellow teeth sticking in
the jaw.

Bill came back just then and said it was a horse's head, but H. O