id, and their story was received with warm expressions of
doubt. It was Dicky who observed:

"Let's go and have a squint at Randall's ten-acre, anyhow. I saw a hare
there the other day."

We went. It is some little way, and as we went disbelief reigned superb
in every breast except Noel's and H. O.'s, so you will see that even the
ready pen of the present author cannot be expected to describe to you
his variable sensations when he got to the top of the hill and suddenly
saw that his little brothers had spoken the truth. I do not mean that
they generally tell lies, but people make mistakes sometimes and the
effect is the same as lies if you believe them.

There _was_ a camp there with real tents and soldiers in gray and red
tunics. I dare say the girls would have said coats. We stood in ambush,
too astonished even to think of lying in it, though of course we know
that this is customary. The ambush was the wood on top of the little
hill, between Randall's ten-acre meadow and Sugden's Waste Wake pasture.

"There would be cover here for a couple of regiments," whispered Oswald,
who was, I think, gifted by Fate with the far-seeingness of a born
general.

Alice merely said "Hist," and we went down to mingle with the troops as
though by accident, and seek for information.

The first man we came to at the edge of the camp was cleaning a sort of
cauldron thing like witches brew bats in.

We went up to him and said, "Who are you? Are you English, or are you
the enemy?"

"We're the enemy," he said, and he did not seem ashamed of being what he
was. And he spoke English with quite a good accent for a foreigner.

"The enemy!" Oswald echoed, in shocked tones. It is a terrible thing to
a loyal and patriotic youth to see an enemy cleaning a pot in an English
field, with English sand, and looking as much at home as if he was in
his foreign fastnesses.

The enemy seemed to read Oswald's thoughts with deadly unerringness. He
said:

"The English are somewhere over on the other side of the hill. They are
trying to keep us out of Maidstone."

After this our plan of mingling with the troops did not seem worth going
on with. This soldier, in spite of his unerringness in reading Oswald's
inmost heart, seemed not so very sharp in other things, or he would
never have given away his secret plans like this, for he must have known
from our accents that we were Britons to the backbone. Or perhaps
(Oswald thought this, and it made his bl