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 Dicky 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 Noël were now discovered to be in tears.

'Of course we did right to tell. Only when the soldier looked at me ...' said Oswald.

'Yes,' said Dicky, 'that's just it.'

In deepest gloom the party retraced its steps.

As we went, Dora said with sniffs:

'I suppose it was the bicycle man's duty.'

'Of course,' said Oswald, 'but it wasn't our duty. And I jolly well wish we hadn't!'

'And such a beautiful day, too,' said Noël, sniffing in his turn.

It was beautiful. The afternoon had been dull, but now the sun was shining flat across the marshes, making everything look as if it had been covered[Pg 42] all over with the best gold-leaf—marsh and trees, and roofs and stacks, and everything.

[Pg 42]

That evening Noël wrote a poem about it all. It began:

 'Poor soldiers, why did you run away On such a beautiful, beautiful day? If you had run away in the rain, Perhaps they would never have found you again, Because then Oswald would not have been there To show the hunter the way to your lair.' 

'Poor soldiers, why did you run away

On such a beautiful, beautiful day?

If you had run away in the rain,

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