Miss Sandal's house was very plain and clean, with lots of white paint, and very difficult to play in. So we were out a good deal. It was seaside, so, of course, there was the beach, and besides that the marsh--big green fields with sheep all about, and wet d.y.k.es with sedge growing, and mud, and eels in the mud, and winding white roads that all look the same, and all very interesting, as though they might lead to almost anything that you didn't expect. Really, of course, they lead to Ashford and Romney and Ivychurch, and real live places like that. But they don't look it.

The day when what I am going to tell you about happened, we were all leaning on the stone wall looking at the pigs. The pigman is a great friend of ours--all except H. O., who is my youngest brother. His name is Horace Octavius, and if you want to know why we called him H. O. you had better read 'The Treasure Seekers' and find out. He had gone to tea with the schoolmaster's son--a hateful kid.

'Isn't that the boy you're always fighting?' Dora asked when H. O. said he was going.

'Yes,' said H. O., 'but, then, he keeps rabbits.'

So then we understood and let him go.

Well, the rest of us were gazing fondly on the pigs, and two soldiers came by.

We asked them where they were off to.

They told us to mind our own business, which is not manners, even if you are a soldier on private affairs.

'Oh, all right,' said Oswald, who is the eldest. And he advised the soldiers to keep their hair on. The little they had was cut very short.

'I expect they're scouts or something,' said d.i.c.ky; 'it's a field-day, or a sham-fight, or something, as likely as not.'

'Let's go after them and see,' said Oswald, ever prompt in his decidings. So we did.

We ran a bit at first, so as not to let the soldiers have too much of a lead. Their red coats made it quite easy to keep them in sight on the winding white marsh road. But we did not catch them up: they seemed to go faster and faster. So we ran a little bit more every now and then, and we went quite a long way after them. But they didn't meet any of their officers or regiments or things, and we began to think that perchance we were engaged in the disheartening chase of the wild goose.

This has sometimes occurred.

There is a ruined church about two miles from Lymchurch, and when we got close to that we lost sight of the red coats, so we stopped on the little bridge that is near there to reconnoitre.

The soldiers had vanished.

'Well, here's a go!' said d.i.c.ky.

'It _is_ a wild-goose chase,' said Noel. 'I shall make a piece of poetry about it. I shall call the t.i.tle the "Vanishing Reds, or, the Soldiers that were not when you got there."'

'You shut up!' said Oswald, whose eagle eye had caught a glimpse of scarlet through the arch of the ruin.

None of the others had seen this. Perhaps you will think I do not say enough about Oswald's quickness of sight, so I had better tell you that is only because Oswald is me, and very modest. At least, he tries to be, because he knows it is what a true gentleman ought to.

'They're in the ruins,' he went on. 'I expect they're going to have an easy and a pipe--out of the wind.'

'I think it's very mysterious,' said Noel. 'I shouldn't wonder if they're going to dig for buried treasure. Let's go and see.'

'No,' said Oswald, who, though modest, is thoughtful. 'If we do they'll stop digging, or whatever they're doing. When they've gone away, we'll go and see if the ground is scratched about.'

So we delayed where we were, but we saw no more scarlet.

In a little while a dull-looking man in brown came by on a bicycle. He stopped and got off.

'Seen a couple of Tommies about here, my lad?' he said to Oswald.

Oswald does not like being called anybody's lad, especially that kind of man's; but he did not want to spoil the review, or field-day, or sham-fight, or whatever it might be, so he said:

'Yes; they're up in the ruins.'

'You don't say so!' said the man. 'In uniform, I suppose? Yes, of course, or you wouldn't have known they were soldiers. Silly cuckoos!'

He wheeled his bicycle up the rough lane that leads to the old ruin.

'It can't be buried treasure,' said d.i.c.ky.

'I don't care if it is,' said Oswald. 'We'll see what's happening. I don't mind spoiling _his_ sport. "My ladding" me like that!'

So we followed the man with the bicycle. It was leaning against the churchyard gate when we got there. The man off it was going up to the ruin, and we went after him.

He did not call out to the soldiers, and we thought that odd; but it didn't make us think where it might have made us if we had had any sense. He just went creeping about, looking behind walls and inside arches, as though he was playing at hide-and-seek. There is a mound in the middle of the ruin, where stones and things have fallen during dark ages, and the gra.s.s has grown all over them. We stood on the mound, and watched the bicycling stranger nosing about like a ferret.

There is an archway in that ruin, and a flight of steps goes down--only five steps--and then it is all stopped up with fallen stones and earth.

The stranger stopped at last at this arch, and stooped forward with his hands on his knees, and looked through the arch and down the steps.

Then he said suddenly and fiercely:

'Come out of it, will you?'

And the soldiers came. I wouldn't have. They were two to his one. They came cringing out like beaten dogs. The brown man made a sort of bound, and next minute the two soldiers were handcuffed together, and he was driving them before him like sheep.

'Back you go the same way as what you come,' he said.

And then Oswald saw the soldiers' faces, and he will never forget what they looked like.

He jumped off the mound, and ran to where they were.

'What have they done?' he asked the handcuffer.

'Deserters,' said the man. 'Thanks to you, my lad, I got 'em as easy as kiss your hand.'

Then one of the soldiers looked at Oswald. He was not very old--about as big as a fifth-form boy. And Oswald answered what the soldier looked at him.

'I'm _not_ a sneak,' he said. 'I wouldn't have told if I'd known. If you'd told me, instead of saying to mind my own business I'd have helped you.'

The soldier didn't answer, but the bicycle man did.

'Then you'd 'a helped yourself into the stone jug, my lad,' said he.

'Help a dirty deserter? You're young enough to know better. Come along, you rubbish!'

And they went.

When they were gone d.i.c.ky said:

'It's very rum. I hate cowards. And deserters are cowards. I don't see why we feel like this.'

Alice and Dora and Noel were now discovered to be in tears.