"Anyhow," said Judith, next to Richard in age and authority, "if he is a rotter, he can go into the Brats' band. You want someone decent," she added, addressing the Twin, whose remark she felt to have savoured of presumption.
This family had, for purposes of combat and of general entertainment, divided itself into two factions, that fought endlessly among the woods and shrubberies. A method had been recently introduced by Richard of utilising the harmless, necessary pocket-handkerchief as a sling for the projection of gravel, and its instant popularity had resulted in the denuding of the avenues of ammunition, and in arousing a great and just fury in the bosom of the laundress. "God knows it isn't me has all the hankershiffs holed this way!" she pointed out. "Thim children is the divil outlawed. Thim'd gallop the woods all the night, like the deer!"
The assortment of the family had been decided rather on the basis of dignity, than on that of a desire to equalise the sides, and thus it befel that Richard, Judith, and John, with the style and title of The Elder Statesmen, were accustomed to drive before them the junior faction of The Brats, consisting of the Twins, Christian, and the dogs, Rinka and Tashpy, with a monotony of triumph that might have been expected to pall, had not variety been imparted by the invention of the punishments that were inflicted upon prisoners. There had been a long and hot July day of notable warfare. The Twins, if small, were swift and wily; even Christian had justified her adoption by a stealthy and successful raid upon the opposition gravel heap. A long and savage series of engagements had ensued, that alternated between flights, and what Christian, blending recollections of nursery doctoring with methods of Indian warfare, designated "stomach-attacks." It was while engaged in one of the latter forms of assault that Christian was captured, and, being abandoned by her comrades, was haled by the captors before Richard, the Eldest Statesmen. A packed Court-martial of enemies speedily found the prisoner guilty, and the delicious determining of the punishment absorbed the attention of the Court. John, with a poet's fancy, suggested that the criminal should be compelled to lick a worm. Judith, more practical, advocated her being sent to the house to steal some jam. "I forgot to," she said.
The Court was held in the Council Chamber, a space between the birches and hazels on the bank of the Ownashee; a fair and green room, ceiled with tremulous leaves, encircled and made secret by high bracken, out of which rose the tarnished-silver stems of the birch trees and the multitudinous hazel-boughs, and furnished with boulders of limestone, planted deep in a green fleece of mingled moss and grass. On one side only was it open to the world, yet on that same side it was most effectively divided from it, by the swift brown stream, speeding down to the big river, singing its shallow summer song as it sped.
Richard, Eldest Statesman, gazed in dark reflection upon the prisoner, meditating her sentence; the prisoner, young enough to tremble in the suspense, old enough to enjoy the nerve-tension and the moment of drama, gazed back at him. Her hair lay in damp rings, and hung in rats'-tails about her forehead. Her small face, with the silver-clear skin, stippled here and there with tiny freckles, was faintly flushed, and moist with the effort of her last great but unavailing run for freedom; her wide eyes were like brown pools scooped from the brown flow of the Ownashee.
"I adjudge," said Richard, in an awful voice, "that the prisoner shall amass three buckets of the best gravel. The same to be taken from the shallow by the seventh stepping-stone."
The prisoner's little brown arm, with a hand thin and brown as a monkey's, went up; the recognised protest.
"Not the seventh, most noble Samurai," she said, anxiously; "Won't it do from the strand?"
"I have spoken," replied the Eldest Statesman, inflexibly.
"Then I won't!" exclaimed Christian; "I—I couldn't! The river giddys me so awfully when I stand still on the stones—"