“Most likely. He came across the stubble, why he was that side while we were this.”
“Awfully nearly done; why it must have been the governor who startled the partridges!”
“Stupes we were not to know some one was about.”
“Awful stupes.”
They walked back to the raft, keeping close to the hedge, and crept on all fours among the ant-hills so as to pass the gateway without the possibility of being seen, though they knew the governor was now too far to observe them.
The governor had been to look at the progress made by the reapers, and then strolled across the stubble, thinking to see what birds were about, as it was not such a great while till the season opened. Coming to the mound, he got up and looked through into the Waste, over which (as over the New Sea) he held manorial rights. At the moment he was looking out into the pasture they were idly approaching him along the hedge, and had he stopped there they would have come on him. As it was, he went back into the stubble, and had gone some fifty yards with his back turned when they entered the gap.
“We might have been tortured,” said Mark, as they stepped on the raft. “Tied up and gimlets bored into our heads.”
“The king of this country is an awful tyrant,” said Bevis. “Very likely he would have fixed us in a hollow tree and smeared us with honey and let the flies eat us.”
“Unless we could save his daughter, who is ill, and all the magicians can’t do her any good.”
“Now they are hoping we shall soon come with a wonderful talisman. We must study magic—we keep on putting it off; I wonder if there really is a jewel in the toad’s head.”