“Who is the lord of this castle?” demanded the New Boy.
“Bindyliggs,” replied Mary Elizabeth, without a moment’s hesitation, a name which I believe neither of us to have heard before.
“Where is this Lord of Bindyliggs?” the New Boy pressed it.
Mary Elizabeth indicated the woodshed. “At meat,” she added gravely.
“Forward!” the New Boy instantly commanded, and the whole troop disappeared in our shed. We heard wood fall, and the clash of meeting weapons, and the troop reappeared, two by way of the low window.
“Enough!” cried the New Boy, grandly. “We have spared him, but there is not a moment to lose. You must come with us immediately. What you got to eat?”
Raptly, we gave them, from under the wistful noses of Irene Helena and the doll without the face and the rest, the entire sliced doughnut, and two more doughnuts, dipped in sugar, which we had been saving so as to have something to look forward to.
“Come with us,” said the New Boy, graciously. “To horse! We may reach the settlement by nightfall—if we escape the Brigands in the Wood. The Black Wood,” he added.
Even then, I recall, I was smitten with wonder that he who had shown so little imagination in that matter of dirt and apples and potatoes should here be teeming with fancy on his own familiar ground. It was years before I understood that there are almost as many varieties of imaginative as of religious experience.
Fascinated, we dropped everything and followed. The way led, it appeared, to the Wells’s barn, a huge, red barn in the block, with doors always invitingly open and chickens pecking about, and doves on a little platform close to the pointed roof.