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In those hot longitudes, perhaps, the blood is always near boiling point, which accounts for Indian tempers, though not for the curry and pepper they eat. But I must not wander; there is no curry at all in this story. About temper I will not say.

The Uncle let us all go with him to the station when the fly came back for him; and when we said good-bye he tipped us all half a quid, without any insidious distinctions about age or considering whether you were a boy or a girl. Our Indian uncle is a true-born Briton, with no nonsense about him.

We cheered him like one man as the train went off, and then we offered the fly-driver a shilling to take us back to the four cross-roads, and the grateful creature did it for nothing because, he said, the gent had tipped him something like. How scarce is true gratitude! So we cheered the driver too for this rare virtue, and then went home to talk about what we should do with our money.

I cannot tell you all that we did with it, because money melts away “like snow-wreaths in thaw-jean,” as Denny says, and somehow the more you have the more quickly it melts. We all went into Maidstone, and came back with the most beautiful lot of brown paper parcels, with things inside that supplied long-felt wants. But none of them belong to this narration, except what Oswald and Denny clubbed to buy.

This was a pistol, and it took all the money they both had, but when Oswald felt the uncomfortable inside sensation that reminds you who it is and his money that are soon parted he said to himself:

“I don’t care. We ought to have a pistol in the house, and one that will go off, too–not those rotten flint-locks. Suppose there should be burglars and us totally unarmed?”

We took it in turns to have the pistol, and we decided always to practise with it far from the house, so as not to frighten the grown-ups, who are always much nervouser about firearms than we are.

It was Denny’s idea getting it; and Oswald owns it surprised him, but the boy was much changed in his character. We got it while the others were grubbing at the pastry-cook’s in the High Street, and we said nothing till after tea, though it was hard not to fire at the birds on the telegraph wires as we came home in the train.

After tea we called a council in the straw-loft, and Oswald said:

“Denny and I have got a secret.”

“I know what it is,” Dicky said, contemptibly. “You’ve found out that shop in Maidstone where peppermint rock is four ounces a penny. H. O. and I found it out before you did.”

Oswald said, “You shut up. If you don’t want to hear the secret you’d better bunk. I’m going to administer the secret oath.”

This is a very solemn oath, and only used about real things, and never for pretending ones, so Dicky said:

“Oh, all right; go ahead! I thought you were only rotting.”

So they all took the secret oath. Noel made it up long before, when he had found the first thrush’s nest we ever saw in the Blackheath garden:

“I will not tell, I will not reveal,
I will not touch, or try to steal;
And may I be called a beastly sneak,
If this great secret I ever repeat.”

It is a little wrong about the poetry, but it is a very binding promise. They all repeated it, down to H. O.

“Now then,” Dicky said, “what’s up?”

Oswald, in proud silence, drew the pistol from his breast and held it out, and there was a murmur of awful amazement and respect from every one of the council. The pistol was not loaded, so we let even the girls have it to look at.