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Oswald does not mind chaff at proper times. But this was not one.

“You seem to be taking it very easy,” he said, with disdainful expression.

“This is an easy,” said the gray soldier, sucking at his pipe to see if it would draw.

“I suppose you don’t care if the enemy gets into Maidstone or not!” exclaimed Oswald, bitterly. “If I were a soldier I’d rather die than be beaten.”

The soldier saluted. “Good old patriotic sentiment,” he said, smiling at the heartfelt boy. But Oswald could bear no more.

“Which is the colonel?” he asked.

“Over there–near the gray horse.”

“The one lighting a cigarette?” H. O. asked.

“Yes–but I say, kiddie, he won’t stand any jaw. There’s not an ounce of vice about him, but he’s peppery. He might kick out. You’d better bunk.”

“Better what?” asked H. O.

“Bunk, bottle, scoot, skip, vanish, exit,” said the soldier.

“That’s what you’d do when the fighting begins,” said H. O. He is often rude like that–but it was what we all thought, all the same. The soldier only laughed.

A spirited but hasty altercation among ourselves in whispers ended in our allowing Alice to be the one to speak to the colonel. It was she who wanted to. “However peppery he is he won’t kick a girl,” she said, and perhaps this was true.

But of course we all went with her. So there were six of us to stand in front of the colonel. And as we went along we agreed that we would salute him on the word three. So when we got near, Dick said, “One, two, three,” and we all saluted very well–except H. O., who chose that minute to trip over a rifle a soldier had left lying about, and was only saved from falling by a man in a cocked hat who caught him deftly by the back of his jacket and stood him up on his legs.

“Let go, can’t you,” said H. O. “Are you the general?”

Before the Cocked Hat had time to frame a reply, Alice spoke to the colonel. I knew what she meant to say, because she had told me as we threaded our way among the resting soldiery. What she really said was:

“Oh, how can you!”

“How can I what ?” said the colonel, rather crossly.

“Why, smoke ?” said Alice.

“My good children, if you’re an infant Band of Hope, let me recommend you to play in some other back yard,” said the Cocked-Hatted Man.

H. O. said, “Band of Hope yourself”–but no one noticed it.

“We’re not a Band of Hope,” said Noel. “We’re British, and the man over there told us you are. And Maidstone’s in danger, and the enemy not a mile off, and you stand smoking.” Noel was standing crying, himself, or something very like it.

“It’s quite true,” Alice said.

The colonel said, “Fiddle de dee.”

But the Cocked-Hatted Man said, “What was the enemy like?”

We told him exactly. And even the colonel then owned there might be something in it.

“Can you show me the place where they are on the map?” he asked.

“Not on the map, we can’t,” said Dicky; “at least, I don’t think so, but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an hour.”

The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the colonel, who returned his scrutiny; then he shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, we’ve got to do something,” he said, as if to himself. “Lead on, Macduff!”

The colonel roused his soldiery from their stupor of pipes by words of command which the present author is sorry he can’t remember.

Then he bade us boys lead the way. I tell you it felt fine, marching at the head of a regiment. Alice got a lift on the Cocked-Hatted One’s horse. It was a red-roan steed of might, exactly as if it had been in a ballad. They call a gray-roan a “blue” in South Africa, the Cocked-Hatted One said.