"Excellent," said the curate; "proceed."
"The robber chief," pursued Harold, warming to his work, "joined

his nefarious comrades, and conversed with them in silent tones.
His expression was truly ferocious, and I ought to have said that

he was armed to the t--"
"There, never mind his teeth," interrupted the curate, rudely;

"there's too much jaw about you altogether. Hurry up and have
done."

"I was in a frightful funk," continued the narrator, warily
guarding his ear with his hand, "but just then the drawing-room

window opened, and you and Aunt Maria came out--I mean emerged.
The burglars vanished silently into the laurels, with horrid

implications!"
The curate looked slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained,

and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have
really seen something. How was the poor man to know--though

the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint--that
the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful

lent us by the knife-and-boot boy?
"Why did you not alarm the house?" he asked.

"'Cos I was afraid," said Harold, sweetly, "that p'raps they
mightn't believe me!"

"But how did you get down here, you naughty little boy?" put in
Aunt Maria.

Harold was hard pressed--by his own flesh and blood, too!
At that moment Edward touched me on the shoulder and glided off

through the laurels. When some ten yards away he gave a low
whistle. I replied by another. The effect was magical. Aunt

Maria started up with a shriek. Harold gave one startled glance
around, and then fled like a hare, made straight for the back

door, burst in upon the servants at supper, and buried himself in
the broad bosom of the cook, his special ally. The curate faced

the laurels--hesitatingly. But Aunt Maria flung herself on him.
"O Mr. Hodgitts!" I heard her cry, "you are brave! for my sake do

not be rash!" He was not rash. When I peeped out a second
later, the coast was entirely clear.

By this time there were sounds of a household timidly emerging;
and Edward remarked to me that perhaps we had better be off.

Retreat was an easy matter. A stunted laurel gave a leg up on to
the garden wall, which led in its turn to the roof of an out-

house, up which, at a dubious angle, we could crawl to the window
of the box-room. This overland route had been revealed to us one

day by the domestic cat, when hard pressed in the course of an
otter-hunt, in which the cat--somewhat unwillingly--was filling

the title role; and it had proved distinctly useful on
occasions like the present. We were snug in bed--minus some

cuticle from knees and elbows--and Harold, sleepily chewing
something sticky, had been carried up in the arms of the friendly

cook, ere the clamour of the burglar-hunters had died away.
The curate's undaunted demeanour, as reported by Aunt Maria, was

generally supposed to have terrified the burglars into flight,
and much kudos accrued to him thereby. Some days later, however,

when he hid dropped in to afternoon tea, and was making a mild
curatorial joke about the moral courage required for taking the

last piece of bread-and-butter, I felt constrained to remark
dreamily, and as it were to the universe at large, "Mr.

Hodgitts! you are brave! for my sake, do not be rash!"
Fortunately for me, the vicar was also a caller on that day; and

it was always a comparatively easy matter to dodge my long-coated
friend in the open.

A HARVESTING
The year was in its yellowing time, and the face of Nature a

study in old gold. "A field or, semee, with garbs of the same:"
it may be false Heraldry--Nature's generally is--but it correctly

blazons the display that Edward and I considered from the
rickyard gate, Harold was not on in this scene, being stretched

upon the couch of pain; the special disorder stomachic, as usual.
The evening before, Edward, in a fit of unwonted amiability, had

deigned to carve me out a turniplantern, an art-and-craft he was
peculiarly deft in; and Harold, as the interior of the turnip

flew out in scented fragments under the hollowing knife, had
eaten largely thereof: regarding all such jetsam as his special

perquisite. Now he was dreeing his weird, with such assistance
as the chemist could afford. But Edward and I, knowing that this

particular field was to be carried to-day, were revelling in the
privilege of riding in the empty waggons from the rickyard

back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to
career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of

a stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we
inland urchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such

stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the
smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had

all been enacted in turn on these dusty quarter decks, as they
swayed and bumped afield.

Another waggon had shot its load, and was jolting out through the
rickyard gate, as we swung ourselves in, shouting, over its tail.

Edward was the first up, and, as I gained my feet, he clutched me
in a death-grapple. I was a privateersman, he proclaimed, and he

the captain of the British frigate Terpsichore, of--I forget
the precise number of guns. Edward always collared the best

parts to himself; but I was holding my own gallantly, when I
suddenly discovered that the floor we battled on was swarming

with earwigs. Shrieking, I hurled free of him, and rolled over
the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward executed a war-dance of

triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I cared
little for that. I knew HE knew that I wasn't afraid of

him, but that I was--and terribly--of earwigs, "those mortal bugs
o' the field." So I let him disappear, shouting lustily for all

hands to repel boarders, while I strolled inland, down the
village.

There was a touch of adventure in the expedition. This was not
our own village, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One

felt that sense of mingled distinction and insecurity which is
familiar to the traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the

head to note you curiously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-
present possibility of missiles on the part of the more juvenile

inhabitants, a class eternallyconservative. Elated with
isolation, I went even more nose-in-air than usual: and "even

so," I mused, "might Mungo Park have threaded the trackless
African forest and. . ." Here I plumped against a soft, but

resisting body.
Recalled to my senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude

every boy under these circumstances instinctively adopts--both
elbows well up over the ears. I found myself facing a tall

elderly man, clean-shaven, clad in well-worn black--a
clergyman evidently; and I noted at once a far-away look in his

eyes, as if they were used to another plane of vision, and could
not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly recalled

thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: "I ask a
thousand pardons, sir," he said; "I am really so very absent-

minded. I trust you will forgive me."
Now most boys would have suspected chaff under this courtly style

of address. I take infinite credit to myself for recognising at
once the natural attitude of a man to whom his fellows were

gentlemen all, neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of
course, I took the blame on myself; adding, that I was very

absent-minded too,--which was indeed the case.
"I perceive," he said pleasantly, "that we have something in

common. I, an old man, dream dreams; you, a young one, see
visions. Your lot is the happier. And now--" his hand had been

resting all this time on a wicket-gate--"you are hot, it is
easily seen; the day is advanced, Virgo is the Zodiacal sign.

Perhaps I may offer you some poor refreshment, if your
engagements will permit."

My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I