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“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. and Noel would not believe it, and Oswald owns that no horse he has ever seen had a head at all that shape.

But Oswald did not stop to argue, because he saw a keeper who showed me how to set snares going by, and he wanted to talk to him about ferrets, so he went off, and Dicky and Denny and Alice with him. Also Daisy and Dora went off to finish reading Ministering Children. So H. O. and Noel were left with the bony head. They took it away.

The incident had quite faded from the mind of Oswald next day. But just before breakfast Noel and H. O. came in, looking hot and anxious. They had got up early and had not washed at all–not even their hands and faces. Noel made Oswald a secret signal. All the others saw it, and with proper delicate feeling pretended not to have.

When Oswald had gone out with Noel and H. O., in obedience to the secret signal, Noel said:

“You know that dragon’s head yesterday?”

“Well?” Oswald said, quickly, but not crossly–the two things are quite different.

“Well, you know what happened in Greek history when some chap sowed dragon’s teeth?”

“They came up armed men,” said H. O.; but Noel sternly bade him shut up, and Oswald said “Well,” again. If he spoke impatiently it was because he smelled the bacon being taken in to breakfast.

“Well,” Noel went on, “what do you suppose would have come up if we’d sowed those dragon’s teeth we found yesterday?”

“Why, nothing, you young duffer,” said Oswald, who could now smell the coffee. “All that isn’t History–it’s Humbug. Come on in to brekker.”

“It’s not humbug,” H. O. cried, “it is history. We did sow–“

“Shut up,” said Noel again. “Look here, Oswald. We did sow those dragon’s teeth in Randall’s ten-acre meadow, and what do you think has come up?”

“Toadstools, I should think,” was Oswald’s contemptible rejoinder.

“They have come up a camp of soldiers,” said Noel–” armed men. So you see it was history. We have sowed army-seed, just like Cadmus, and it has come up. It was a very wet night. I dare say that helped it along.”

Oswald could not decide which to disbelieve–his brother or his ears. So disguising his doubtful emotions without a word, he led the way to the bacon and the banqueting hall.

He said nothing about the army-seed then, neither did Noel and H. O. But after the bacon we went into the garden, and then the good elder brother said:

“Why don’t you tell the others your cock-and-bull story?”

So they did, 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.