"ARE THEY REALLY GOING TO FIGHT? ARE THE BOYS REALLY GOING TO KILL ANYONE? IT'S SO ROTTEN IN MOST STORIES, BECAUSE THEY ONLY TALK ABOUT IT."
"WAIT," SAID THE AUTHOR.
The sentinels were stationed each at one door at the back of the house, twenty or thirty yards apart. The principal entrance they had locked, so that there remained to guard only the two doors into the courtyard. Their instructions were to permit the boys to pass in and out, and to ride off at evening unmolested, but the attacks made upon them prompted the additional precaution to keep the aggressive four out of the house altogether. The two men walked up and down at their posts, and occasionally exchanged a remark together, and occasionally threw a glance at the shrubbery. They seemed, however, to feel no apprehension.
"Can any one of you climb?" the blacksmith asked suddenly.
"I can," said Jack.
"Famous!" said the blacksmith; "then come with me." So saying, he led the way down the shrubbery until the front of the house was in view. "Now," he added, "you shall climb that pipe." And he pointed to a pipe by the doorway. "The ivy will help you."
"And when I am at the top?" Jack asked.
"When you are at the top," said the blacksmith, "you will loosen a stone and drop it on the head of one of your friends yonder"—indicating the courtyard with a jerk of his head. "That will settle him. At the same moment I'll overwhelm the other. We must prevent them firing at any costs. But don't miss him, whatever you do, or we are worse off than before."
"No," said Jack, "I shall aim very carefully. I will wait till he is exactly underneath, and then, plob! It will get him on his topknot."
The ivy was, of course, out of sight of the two sentries so long as they stayed at their posts; but, as anyone who knows Myddelton Hall, which is little altered since that time, will understand, a very trifling extension of his beat would bring one of them into a position to command the carriagedrive which Jack had to cross to get from the shrubbery to the house. However, the boy sauntered off, looking as aimless as a piece of floating thistledown, and gained the house unperceived. Directly he was past the soldiers' line of vision he became brisker, and in a few minutes the party in the shrubbery, who had by this time returned to their original post, and at the point in the bushes nearest to the sentries, saw him scrambling over the roof.