FullReads

“Don’t you think we ought to carry swords, though?” worried Terry. “Pirates always carry swords. ”

“Oh, I don’t believe modern ones do,” said Max. “I fancy they just carry revolvers and six-shooters and things like that, and I don’t believe we need buy them till we reach Bristol. ”

“Well, maybe; but when we get to Bristol, we ought to buy sabers andguns, so when we find a pirate ship and go aboard, they won’t think we’re a lot of tenderfeet,” insisted Terry.

“That’s right,” Ginger agreed. “Now as I say, we must walk, and I think we ought to go up to ‘Ampstead ‘Eath and practice being tramps—you know, meeting savage dogs, and sleeping under ‘edges, and telling the direction by the bark on the trees, and making fires by rubbing sticks together. ”

“That’s so; we must learn that,” agreed Captain Terry, and the three boys, solemnly starting for the Spanish Main by way of Hampstead Heath, made a gallant beginning by finding a Number 24 bus.

The morning fog was gone when they reached the heath; the broad wastes of that tamed moorland were bright with sun and wind, in whose exhilaration the three boys forgot that they were king and star and expert hotel page, and chased one another, yowled and whistled like any other three small boys, while Josephus went earnestly mad, snapping at royal heels with loving painfulness.

Max remembered from his English history that the heath had once been the favorite scene of highway robbery, and the four of them played highwaymen. Josephus, unhappily harnessed by Terry’s belt, was the faithful coach horse, Terry was the driver, Ginger the haughty and noble passenger, and Max was permitted the grandest rle of all, that of the robber.

Old Jim Dangerfield, the gallant coachman of the Yorkshire Flyer, was apprehensive. He clucked cheerily enough to his stout team of dappled mares, Jo and Sephus, and hummed a careless little tune (“My Toil and Strife Has Gotta Eye on We, Ba-by”), but when his passengers were not looking, brave Old Jim shuddered, hunched down within his many-caped cloak, now whitened with flying snowflakes.

On the seat beside him was a mysterious man in the old, ancient costume of the day. He had refused to give his name, but he was Lord Montmorency. Old Jim knew nothing of this, however.

And so they went on across the heath when all of a sudden a cloaked and masked man, riding a huge great big black horse, leaped out from behind a tree and leveling his pistol cried, “Your money or your life!”

Old Jim reached for his own pistol, but the villain shot him dead and he expired all over the ground, while the faithful Jo and Sephus licked his face—after craftily sneaking out of their harness.

But the brave Lord Montmorency was not to be quelled by anybody. Crying, “Come one, come all! I defy the blooming lot o’ ye!” he leaped from the coach, drawing his trusty sword and, knocking the pistol from the wicked highwayman’s hand, he engaged him in mortal combat.

It lasted a long time. In fact, it lasted till Old Jim Dangerfield protested, “Oh, that ain’t fair—you two going on swording for hours and hours when I’m dead! I’m going to come to life!”

In the argument with Lord Montmorency and the robber as to whether a pistoled coachman could prove to be merely playing possum, they forgot the game and, panting, lay on the grass.

“My uncle ‘Ennery was a ‘ighwayman once,” mused Ginger.

“Oh, didn’t they arrest him?” fretted Terry.

“No, ‘e wasn’t thatkind of a ‘ighwayman. ‘E gave all ‘e robbed to the poor. ”

“Where was this?” Terry sounded suspicious.

“Hey, quit scattering dust all over me, will you, Mixy?” was Ginger’s adequate answer. “Excuse me, Your Majesty, but honestly, it gets in me eyes. ”

“When we go back—I mean, if we hadn’t gone off to be pirates, I’d ask my mother to invite your uncle Henry to the palace,” considered Max. “He must be a wonderful man. I don’t like my uncles so much. But I had some lovely ancestors. I’m descended from Genghis Khan!”

“Oh, I’ve seen ’im. ‘E’s that banker from New York. ‘E often stays at the Picardie,” condescended Ginger.

“I think that must be another Khan,” Max said doubtfully. “I think Genghis lived years and years ago. And my grandfather had an estate with two hundred thousand acres of land!”