Oswald could not decide which to disbelieve—his brother or his ears. So, disguising his doubtful emotions without a word, he led the way to the bacon and the banqueting hall.
He said nothing about the army-seed then, neither did Noel and H. O. But after the bacon we went into the garden, and then the good elder brother said—
‘Why don’t you tell the others your cock-and-bull story?’
So they did, and their story was received with warm expressions of doubt. It was Dicky who observed—
‘Let’s go and have a squint at Randall’s ten-acre, anyhow. I saw a hare there the other day.’
We went. It is some little way, and as we went, disbelief reigned superb in every breast except Noel’s and H. O.‘s, so you will see that even the ready pen of the present author cannot be expected to describe to you his variable sensations when he got to the top of the hill and suddenly saw that his little brothers had spoken the truth. I do not mean that they generally tell lies, but people make mistakes sometimes, and the effect is the same as lies if you believe them.
There WAS a camp there with real tents and soldiers in grey and red tunics. I daresay the girls would have said coats. We stood in ambush, too astonished even to think of lying in it, though of course we know that this is customary. The ambush was the wood on top of the little hill, between Randall’s ten-acre meadow and Sugden’s Waste Wake pasture.
‘There would be cover here for a couple of regiments,’ whispered Oswald, who was, I think, gifted by Fate with the far-seeingness of a born general.
Alice merely said ‘Hist’, and we went down to mingle with the troops as though by accident, and seek for information.
The first man we came to at the edge of the camp was cleaning a sort of cauldron thing like witches brew bats in.