“As if belfries wanted lead gutters. They could easily have put slates in the place of the sheet of lead we took,” said the Terror with equal bitterness.
“Why can’t they leave us alone? It quite spoils the country not to have catapults,” said Erebus, gazing with mournful eyes on the rich autumn scene through which they moved.
The Twins had several grievances against their elders; but the loss of their catapults was the bitterest. They had used those weapons to enrich the simple diet which was all their mother’s slender means allowed them; on fortunate days they had enriched it in defiance of the game laws. Keepers and farmers had made no secret of their suspicions that this was the case: but the careful Twins never afforded them the pleasure of adducing evidence in support of those suspicions. Then a heavy thunderstorm revealed the fact that they had removed a sheet of lead, which they had regarded as otiose, from the belfry gutter, to cast it into bullets for their catapults; a consensus of the public opinion of Little Deeping had demanded that they should be deprived of them; and their mother, yielding to the demand, had forbidden them to use them any longer.
The Twins always obeyed their mother; but they resented bitterly the action of Little Deeping. It was, indeed, an ungrateful place, since their exploits afforded its old ladies much of the carping conversation they loved. In a bitter and vindictive spirit the Twins set themselves to become the finest stone-throwers who ever graced a countryside; and since they had every natural aptitude in the way of muscle and keenness of eye, they were well on their way to realize their ambition. There may, indeed, have been northern boys of thirteen who could outthrow the Terror, but not a girl in England could throw a stone straighter or harder than Erebus.
They came to a gate opening on to Little Deeping common; Erebus vaulted it gracefully; the Terror, hampered by the bag of booty, climbed over it (for the Twins it was always simpler to vault or climb over a gate than to unlatch it and walk through) and took their way along a narrow path through the gorse and bracken. They had gone some fifty yards, when from among the bracken on their right a voice cried: “Bang-g-g! Bang-g-g!”
The Twins fell to the earth and lay still; and Wiggins came out of the gorse, his wooden rifle on his shoulder, a smile of proud triumph on his richly freckled face. He stood over the fallen Twins; and his smile of triumph changed to a scowl of fiendish ferocity.
“Ha! Ha! Shot through the heads!” he cried. “Their bones will bleach in the pathless forest while their scalps hang in the wigwam of Red Bear the terror of the Cherokees!”
Then he scalped the Twins with a formidable but wooden knife. Then he took from his knickerbockers pocket a tattered and dirty note-book, an inconceivable note-book (it was the only thing to curb the exuberant imagination of Erebus) made an entry in it, and said in a tone of lively satisfaction: “You’re only one game ahead.”
“I thought we were three,” said Erebus, rising.
“They’re down in the book,” said Wiggins; firmly; and his bright blue eyes were very stern.