saw the old man doing something to a gun, in front of the chiphouse door. Quickening his pace, Reggie was making straight towards him, but before he could clamber through the hole in the garden fence a quavering shout reached him.

“Now, then, stay where you are, boy! If you come a step nearer I will set the dog at you.” Wrack’s aspect was so threatening that Reggie decided it to be the best part of valour to stay where he was, especially as a powerful dog which had been lying on the ground rose at this moment and growled in a menacing fashion.

“I’ve come to tell you something that you will be glad to know,” called Reggie.

“Tell it, then, and be off. I don’t want a lot of loafers on these premises,” growled the old man. And enraged though he was, Reggie’s face twitched in a grin of amusement. One small and perspiring boy who had run all the way from the schoolhouse could hardly be described as a lot of loafers.

“Gittins’s folks and a lot of women are going to have a surprise party here to-night. They are going to bring supper, and dance to an accordion afterwards,” called out Reggie in clear tones which carried amazingly in the hot, still air. If he had been able to whisper the information it would not have seemed so bad, but to be obliged to shout out what in honour he ought to have kept silent about made him so angry that he hated the old man he had come so far to serve.

Wrack gave a scornful, cackling laugh, and the dog growled in sympathy.

“If the surprise party come here it is likely they may find themselves a bit surprised,” the old man called back, then went on cleaning his gun as if no one were there.

“Ain’t you going to give me nothing for coming all this way to tell you?” demanded Reggie in a shrill tone of indignation. It was past believing that this disagreeable old man should actually refuse to reward him for all his trouble.

“I’ll give you the stick if you don’t clear out of this sharp,” the old man retorted with a snarl, and he looked as if he meant it.

Reggie was insistent, and inclined to clamour for what he deemed his rights, so he burst into noisy abuse after the manner of his kind.

“Think I’m going to put up with that sort of treatment, do you? A regular old skin-flint you are, and no mistake. I hope the surprise party will come, scores of ’em, and I hope they 

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