“No more we have,” said Bevis. “This is very stupid, and they will not let me have any, though I have got some money, and I have a great mind to buy some and hide it. Just as if we did not know how to use powder, and as if we did not know how to shoot! Oh, I know! We will go and cut a bough of alder—there’s ever so many alders by the Longpond—and burn it and make charcoal; it makes the best charcoal, you know, and they always—use it for gunpowder, and then we can get some saltpetre. Let me see—”
“The Bailiff had some saltpetre the other day,” said Mark.
“So he did: it is in the dairy. Oh yes, and I know where some sulphur is. It is in the garden-house, where the tools are, in the orchard; it’s what they use to smother the bees with—”
“That’s on brown paper,” said Mark; “that won’t do.”
“No it’s not. You have to melt it to put it on paper, and dip the paper in. This is in a piece, it is like a short bar, and we will pound it up and mix; them all together and make capital gunpowder.”
“Hurrah!” cried Mark, throwing down the auger. “Let’s go and cut the alder. Come on!”
“Stop,” said Bevis. “Lean on me, and walk slow. Don’t you know you have caught a dreadful fever, from being in the swamps by the river, and you can hardly walk, and you are very thin and weak? Lean on my arm and hang your head.”
Mark hung his head, turning his rosy cheeks down to the buttercups, and dragged his sturdy fever-stricken limbs along with an effort.
“Humph!” said a gruff voice.
“It’s the Indians!” cried Bevis, startled; for they were so absorbed they had not heard the Bailiff come up behind them. They quite jumped, as if about to be scalped.