The boy gasped, glanced once at his chief, and made a bolt for the door, through which he had fled before the sentinels had time to stop him. At the clatter Prissy opened her eyes.

"What is the matter with that boy? Couldn't he say grace? Didn't he remember the beginning? Well, you say it then----"

Nipper Donnan shook his head. He had a fine natural contempt for all religious services in the abstract, but when one was brought before him as a ceremony, his sense of discipline told him that it must somehow be valuable.

"Better say it yourself," he suggested.

Whereat Prissy devoutly clasped her hands and shut her eyes.

There was a smart smack and something fell over. Prissy opened her eyes, and saw a boy sprawling on the gra.s.s.

"Right," said Nipper Donnan cheerfully, "go ahead--Joe Craig laughed.

I'll teach him to laugh except when I tell him to."

So Prissy again proceeded with a grace of her own composition:

"_G.o.d bless our table, Bless our food; And make us stable, Brave and good._"

After all was over Prissy left the Castle of Windy Standard, without indeed obtaining any pledge from the chief of the army of occupation, but not without having done some good. And she went forth with dignity too. For not only did the robber chieftain provide her with an escort, but he ordered the ramparts to be manned, and a general salute to be fired in her honour.

Prissy waved her hand vigorously, and had already proceeded a little way towards the stepping-stones, when she stopped, laid down her basket, and ran back to the postern gate. She took her little tortoise-sh.e.l.l card-case out of her pocket.

"Oh, I was nearly forgetting--how dreadfully rude of me!" she said, and forthwith pulled out a card on which she had previously written very neatly:

+---------------------------------------+

_Miss Priscilla Smith_

_At Home Every Day_

+---------------------------------------+

She laid it on the stones, and tripped away. "I'm sorry I have not my brother's card to leave also," she said, looking up at the brigand chief, who had been watching her curiously from a window.

"Oh," said Nipper Donnan, "we shall be pleased to see him if he drops in on Sat.u.r.day--or any other time."

Then he waited till the trim white figure was some distance from the gateway before he took his cap from his head and waved it in the air.

"Three proper cheers for the little lady!" he cried.

And the grim old walls of the Castle of Windy Standard never echoed to a heartier shout than that with which the Smoutchy boys sped Miss Priscilla Smith, the daughter of their arch enemy, upon her homeward way.

Prissy poised herself on tiptoe at the entrance of the copse, and blew them a dainty collective kiss from her fingers.

"Thank you so much," she cried, "you are very kind. Come and see me soon--and be sure you stop to tea."

And with that she tripped swiftly away homeward with an empty basket and a happy heart.

That night in her little room before she went to sleep she read over her favourite text, "Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of G.o.d."

"Oh dear," she said, "I should so like to be one some day."

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

Sat.u.r.day morning dawned calm and clear after heavy rain on the hills, with a Sabbath-like peace in the air. The smoke of Edam rose straight up into the firmament from a hundred chimneys, and the Lias Coal Mine contributed a yet taller pillar to the skies, which bushed out at the top till it resembled an umbrella with a thick handle. Hugh John had been very early astir, and one of his first visits had been to the gipsy camp, where he found Billy Blythe with several others all clad in their tumbling tights, practising their great Bounding Brothers'

act.

"h.e.l.lo," cried Hugh John jovially, "at it already?"

"The mornin's the best time for suppling the jints!" answered Billy sententiously; "ask Lep.r.o.nia Lovell, there. She should know with all them tin pans going c.l.i.tter-clatter on her back."

"I'll be thankin' ye, Billy Blythe, to kape a tight holt on the slack o' that whopper jaw of yours. It will be better for you at supper-time than jeerin' at a stranger girl, that is arnin' her bite o' bread daycent. And that's a deal more than ye can do, aye, or anny wan like ye!"

And with these brave words, Lep.r.o.nia Lovell went jingling away.

The Bounding Brothers threw themselves into knots, spun themselves into parti-coloured tops, turned double and treble somersaults, built human pyramids, and generally behaved as if they had no bones in any permanent positions throughout their entire bodies. Hugh John stood by in wonder and admiration.

"Are you afraid?" cried Billy from where he stood, arching his shoulders and swaying a little, as one of the supporters of the pyramid. "No?--then take off your boots." Hugh John instantly stood in his stocking soles.

"Up with him!" And before he knew it, he was far aloft, with his feet on the shoulders of the highest pair, who supported him with their right and left hands respectively. From his elevated perch he could see the enemy's flag flaunting defiance from the topmost battlements of the castle.

As soon as he reached the ground he mentioned what he had seen to Billy Blythe.

"We'll have it low and mean enough this night as ever was, before the edge o' dark!" said Billy, with a grim nod of his head.

The rains of the night had swelled the ford so that the stepping-stones were almost impracticable--indeed, entirely so for the short brown legs of Sir Toady Lion. This circ.u.mstance added greatly to the strength of the enemy's position, and gave the Smoutchies a decided advantage.

"They can't be at the castle all the time," said Billy; "why not let my mates and me go in before they get there? Then we could easily keep every one of them out."

This suggestion much distressed General Smith, who endeavoured to explain the terms of his contract to the gipsy lad. He showed him that it would not be fair to attack the Smoutchies except on Sat.u.r.day, because at any other time they could not have all their forces in the field.

Billy thought with some reason that this was simple folly. But in time he was convinced of the wisdom of not "making two blazes of the same wasps' byke," as he expressed it.

"Do for them once out and out, and be done with it!" was his final advice.

Hugh John could not keep from thinking how stale and unprofitable it would be when all the Smoutchies had been finally "done for," and when he did not waken to new problems of warfare every morning.

According to the final arrangements the main attack was to be developed from the broadest part of the castle island below the stepping-stones. There were two boats belonging to the house of Windy Standard, lying in a boat-house by the little pier on the way to Oaklands. For security these were attached by a couple of padlocks to a strong double staple, which had been driven right through the solid floor of the landing-stage.

The padlocks were new, and the whole appeared impregnable to the simple minds of the children, and even to Mike and Peter Greg. But Billy smiled as he looked at them.

"Why, opening them's as easy as falling off a stool when you're asleep. Gimme a hairpin."

But neither Prissy nor Cissy Carter had yet attained to the dignity of having their hair done up, so neither carried such a thing about with them. Business was thus at a standstill, when Hugh John called to Prissy, "Go and ask Jane Housemaid to give us one."

"A good thick 'un!" called Billy Blythe after her.