"Don"t know all their names, but the one that hurted me was----" began Toady Lion.
But who the villain was will never be known, for at that moment the bedclothes became violently disturbed immediately in front of Sir Toady Lion"s nose. A fearful black countenance nodded once at him and disappeared.
"Black Sambo!" gasped Toady Lion, awed by the terrible appearance, and falling back from the place where the wizard had so suddenly appeared.
"What did I understand you to say, little boy?" said Mr. Mant, with his pencil on his book.
"Ow--it was Black Sambo!" Toady Lion almost screamed. Mr. Mant gravely noted the fact.
"What in the world does he mean?" asked Mr. Mant, casting his eyes searchingly from Prissy to General Napoleon and back again.
"He means "Black Sambo"!" said Prissy, devoting herself strictly to facts, and leaving the Chief Constable to his proper business of interpreting them.
"What is his other name?" said Mr. Mant.
"Soulis!" said General Smith from the bed.
The three gentlemen looked at each other, smiled, and shook their heads.
"What did I tell you?" said Mr. Davenant Carter. "Try as I will, I cannot get the simplest thing out of my Sammy and Cissy if they don"t choose to tell."
Nevertheless Mr. Smith, being a sanguine man and with little experience of children, tried again.
"There is no black boy in the neighbourhood," said Mr. Smith severely; "now tell the truth, children--at once, when I bid you!"
He uttered the last words in a loud and commanding tone.
"Us is telling the troof, father dear," said Toady Lion, in the "coaxy-woaxy" voice which he used when he wanted marmalade from Janet or a ride on the saddle from Mr. Picton Smith.
"Perhaps the boy had blackened his face to deceive the eye," suggested Mr. Mant, with the air of one familiar from infancy with the tricks and devices of the evil-minded of all ages.
"Was the ringleader"s face blackened?--Answer at once!" said Mr. Smith sternly.
The General extracted his bruised and battered right hand from under the clothes and looked at it.
"I think so," he said, "leastways some has come off on my knuckles!"
Mr. Davenant Carter burst into a peal of jovial mirth.
"Didn"t I tell you?--It isn"t a bit of use badgering children when they don"t want to tell. Let"s go over to the castle."
And with that the three gentlemen went out, while Napoleon Smith, Prissy, and Sir Toady Lion were left alone.
The General beckoned them to his bedside with his nose--quite an easy thing to do if you have the right kind of nose, which Hugh John had.
"Now look here," he said, "if you"d told, I"d have jolly well flattened you when I got up. "Tisn"t our business to tell p"leecemen things."
"That wasn"t a p"leeceman," said Sir Toady Lion, "hadn"t no shiny b.u.t.tons."
"That"s the worst kind," said the General in a low, hissing whisper; "all the same you stood to it like bricks, and now I"m going to get well and begin on the campaign at once."
"Don"t you be greedy-teeth and eat it all yourself!" interjected Toady Lion, who thought that the campaign was something to eat, and that it sounded good.
"What are you going to do?" said Prissy, who had a great belief in the executive ability of her brother.
"I know their secret hold," said General-Field-Marshal Smith grandly, "and in the hour of their fancied security we will fall upon them and----"
"And what?" gasped Prissy and Toady Lion together, awaiting the revelation of the horror.
"Destroy them!" said General Smith, in a tone which was felt by all parties to be final.
He laid himself back on his pillow and motioned them haughtily away.
Prissy and Sir Toady Lion retreated on tiptoe, lest Janet should catch them and send them to the parlour--Prissy to read her chapter, and her brother along with her to keep him out of mischief.
And so the great soldier was left to his meditations in the darkened hospital chamber.
CHAPTER X.
A SCOUTING ADVENTURE.
General Smith, having now partially recovered, was mustering his forces and arranging his plans of campaign. He had spoken no hasty word when he boasted that he knew the secret haunt of the robbers.
For, some time before, during a brief but glorious career as a pirate, he had been brought into connection with Nipper Donnan, the strongest butcher"s boy of the town, and the ringleader in all mischief, together with Joe Craig, Nosie Cuthbertson, and Billy M"Robert, his ready followers.
Hugh John had once been a member of the Comanche Cowboys, as Nipper Donnan"s band was styled; but a disagreement about the objects of attack had hastened a rupture, and the affair of the castle was but the last act in a hostility long latent. In fact the war was always simmering, and was ready to boil over on the slightest provocation.
For when Hugh John found that his father"s orchards, his father"s covers and hencoops were to be the chief prey (being safer than the farmers" yards, where there were big dogs always loose, and the town streets, where "bobbies" mostly congregated), he struck. He reflected that one day all these things would belong to himself. He would share with Prissy and Sir Toady Lion, of course; but still mainly they would belong to him. Why then plunder them now? The argument was utilitarian but sufficient.
Though he did not mention the fact to Prissy or Sir Toady Lion, Hugh John was perfectly well acquainted with the leaders in the fray at the castle. He knew also that there were motives for the enmity of the Comanche Cowboys other and deeper than the town rights to the possession of the Castle of Windy Standard.
It was night when Hugh John cautiously pushed up the sash of his window and looked out. A few stars were high up aloft wandering through the grey-blue fields of the summer night, as it were listlessly and with their hands in their pockets. A corn-crake cried in the meadow down below, steadily, remorselessly, like the aching of a tooth. A white owl pa.s.sed the window with an almost noiseless whiff of fluffy feathers. Hugh John sniffed the cool pungent night smell of the dew on the near wet leaves and the distant mown gra.s.s. It always went to his head a little, and was the only thing which made him regret that he was to be a soldier. Whenever he smelt it, he wanted to be an explorer of far-off lands, or an honest poacher--even a gamekeeper might do, in case the other vocations proved unattainable.
Hugh John got out of the window slowly, leaving Sir Toady Lion asleep and the door into Prissy"s room wide open. He dropped easily and lightly upon the roof of the wash-house, and, steadying himself upon the tiles, he slid down till he heard Caesar, the black Newfoundland, stir in his kennel. Then he called him softly, so that he might not bark. He could not take him with him to-night, for though Caesar was little more than a puppy his step was like that of a cow, and when released he went blundering end on through the woods like a festive avalanche. Hugh John"s father, for reasons of his own, persisted in calling him "The Potwalloping Elephant."
So, having a.s.sured himself that Caesar would not bark, the boy dropped to the ground, taking the roof of the dog-kennel on the way. Caesar stirred, rolled himself round, and came out breathing hard, and thump-thumping Hugh John"s legs with his thick tail, with distinctly audible blows.
Then when he understood that he was not to be taken, he sat down at the extremity of his chain and regarded his master wistfully through the gloom with his head upon one side; and as Hugh John took his way down the avenue, Caesar moaned a little, intoning his sense of injury and disappointment as the parson does a litany.
At the first turn of the road Hugh John had just time to dart aside into the green, acrid-scented, leathery-leaved shrubbery, where he lay crouched with his hands on his knees and his head thrust forward, while Tom the keeper went slowly by with his arm about Jane Housemaid"s waist.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "WAIT TILL THE NEXT TIME YOU WON"T LEND ME THE FERRET, TOM CANNON! O-HO, JANE HOUSEMAID, WILL YOU TELL MY FATHER THE NEXT TIME I TAKE YOUR DUST SCOOP?"]
"Aha!" chuckled Hugh John; "wait till the next time you won"t lend me the ferret, Tom Cannon! O-ho, Jane Housemaid, will you tell my father the next time I take your dust scoop out to the sand-hole to help dig trenches? I think not!"
And Hugh John hugged himself in his pleasure at having a new weapon so admirably double-barrelled. He looked upon the follies of love, as manifested in the servants" hall and upon the outskirts of the village, as so much excellent material by which a wise man would not fail to profit. Janet Sheepshanks was very severe on such delinquencies, and his father--well, Hugh John felt that Tom Cannon would not wish to appear before his master in such a connection. He had a vague remembrance of a certain look he had once seen on his father"s face when Allan Chestney, the head-keeper, came out from Mr.
Picton Smith"s workroom with these words ringing in his ear, "Now, sir, you will do as I tell you, or I will give you a character--_but_, such a character as you will carry through the world with you, and which will be buried with you when you die."