THE grounds round Eversley were unusually large for a suburban house, and there was plenty of room for a good romping game.

First came the garden with the greenhouses and vineries, with a large tennis-green at the side, then two small paddocks almost large enough to be honoured by the name of fields, with a walk all round bordered by a row of fruit-trees. These were separated from the Heath by a double fence, enclosing a tangled hedge which in summer was a mass of wild-roses and honeysuckle, but which now lay bare and dead under its covering of snow.

At the far corner of one of the paddocks, quite hidden from the house, was a little summer-house, where in summer the children kept their gardening tools and played on rainy days, and behind it stood a fine old oak-tree, with low spreading branches, along which any one might creep, and drop down on the other side of the hedge on to the Heath.

Altogether it was a delightful place for a game of hide-and-seek, and the children found it so, as they chased each other round and round the paddock, or dodged out and in among the narrow paths which separated the vineries and potting-houses from the stables.

The game was at its height when Isobel and Vivian, hot and breathless, found a convenient hiding-place between the summer-house and the trunk of the old oak, and were resting, safe from pursuit, while Ronald and Claude were searching for them in all directions round by the stables and the kitchen-garden—Ralph, who had been taken, watching them from the shelter of the ‘home.’

‘This is a lovely place to hide in, and no one knows of it but myself,’ said Isobel, brushing the snow from her skirts, ‘and it is even better in summer, when the leaves are on the trees. When I crawl in here no one can see a trace of me, no matter how close they come. If Ralph had been on our track he might have thought of coming round the summer-house, and he might have seen our footprints, but I don’t think Claude ever will.’

‘Yes, it is a jolly place for hiding, and that looks a jolly tree to climb,’ answered Vivian, looking with longing eyes at the low spreading branches. ‘Suppose we crawl along one of those branches and drop over on to the Heath, and then get “home” by the gate, wouldn’t Claude look astonished? He would think we had fallen from the clouds.’

‘Yes, do let us,’ said Isobel, always ready for any deed of daring, and, quick as thought she was up the tree and crawling carefully along one of the wide branches.

Vivian watched her with admiring eyes.

‘You are a brick, Isobel,’ he said; ‘you can climb as well as any boy, and yet you are so nice and dainty. I wish the Lister girls down at home saw you, they are such stiff, starched, stuck-up prigs; they think that no girl can climb and do that sort of thing and yet be what they call ladylike. If they have got to get over a wall, no matter how low it is, they cry out and make such a fuss. We fellows hate them. They spoil all the parties and picnics with their silly ways, and yet they have to be asked, for their mother lets them have awfully jolly parties, and they always ask us.’

‘Silly things!’ said Isobel, turning round now that she had reached the end of the branch, and trying to bob up and down so as to get a swing.

‘But I am rather sorry for them all the same, for I expect they have no brothers. I always pity girls who have no brothers. I can tell them as soon as I see them, they walk so straight and proper, one on each side of their governess.’

‘But supposing there are three of them,’ said Vivian, laughing.

‘Oh, then two walk in front, and one with the governess,’ said Isobel; ‘but they all have the same proper look. If you like, I’ll point some of them out to you when we go down the Finchley Road.’

‘You would point out girls you knew, who have no brothers,’ said Vivian, trying to tease her.

‘I’m not so mean,’ answered Isobel, the delicate colour rising to her face at the imputation; ‘but if you intend to come along this branch you had better come quickly. I see Claude’s cap past the end of the hen-house.’

Vivian began crawling along the branch, but presently he stopped short.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to something that looked like a bit of dirty rag, which stuck out of the side of a thick branch just over his head. Isobel frowned and hesitated.

‘You make me tell you all my secrets,’ she said at last, laughing; ‘but if I tell you, you must promise, honour bright, not to tell any one else.’

‘I promise,’ said Vivian solemnly, looking curiously at the odd-looking bundle, which was partly covered with snow.

‘Well, then, that’s my very own private hiding-place. I found it out by myself, and no one else knows of it. I was up here one day last summer, and was walking along this branch and holding on to that one—you can do that in summer, when the branches are not slippery—and all at once my fingers went into a hole. The wood felt quite rotten, and I broke it away, and made it bigger, and I found that the whole branch was hollow, so I began to use it to put things in—story-books and things. Then, on half-holidays when I wanted to be alone, I used to climb up here, and sit and read, and nobody knew where I was.’

‘But what is that bundle of rags for?’ went on Vivian, putting up his hand to pull them down.

‘Oh, don’t touch them!’ cried Isobel, almost overbalancing herself in her anxiety; ‘that is an old duster that I borrowed from Mary. I stuck it in to prevent the rain and snow getting inside the branch and making the hole all wet. It would spoil my books, you see, if it got damp.’

‘I won’t touch it; I just want to see,’ said Vivian, stretching his neck and regarding the place with keen interest. ‘Do you ever keep things in it just now?’

‘No, never,’ said Isobel; ‘it’s far too wet; besides, it would be no fun sitting up a tree at Christmas time.’

At that moment Claude caught sight of Isobel’s bright scarlet tam o’ shanter over the top of the summer-house, and, with a shout to Ronald, he bore down on them as fast as his fat little legs would let him.

‘Caught!’ cried Ronald as he raced up; ‘fairly caught, for you cannot get off that branch without our getting hold of you.’

‘Can’t we?’ cried Isobel mischievously, as she rocked her end of the branch gently up and down. ‘Just wait and see.’

‘Let me go first, Isobel,’ said Vivian, crawling along to where she stood, and trying to pass her; ‘the ground may be harder than we think, and my boots are thicker than yours, so I won’t feel the jump so much, and you can see how I get on.’

‘Fudge!’ replied Isobel, refusing to give up her point of vantage. ‘It looks high from here; but if I let myself down, and hold on by my arms, I can drop quite easily. Robin Earlison and I did it one day last summer, and got round to the “home” before the others knew where we had gone.’

She was stooping down preparing to lower herself, when all at once there was a sudden crack, and, before either of the children could move, the branch gave way, and fell with its burden on the hard path, which at this point bordered the Heath.

Ronald in great alarm ran forward and tried to find an opening in the thick, snow-covered hedge through which he could squeeze himself.

‘Are you hurt?’ he cried anxiously, finding that his efforts only resulted in scratched hands and ruffled hair. ‘I can’t get through, but I will run into the house and call somebody if you are.’

‘No, we’re not,’ answered Vivian, scrambling to his feet, anxious only that the news of this new escapade should not reach his aunt’s ears; for, although no one had said so, he felt that she would not like the idea of any of the children getting out of bounds in this way.

‘Then we shall come and catch you,’ shouted Ronald, and Vivian could hear the sound of his retreating footsteps going round by the apple-tree. He had answered for Isobel and himself when he had said that neither of them were hurt; but Isobel, who had sat up at first, was now lying back on the path again, with a funny, dazed look in her eyes.

‘You’re not hurt, Isobel, are you?’ he asked, kneeling down beside her, and feeling frightened all at once; ‘for if you are, I had better run for Aunt Dora.’

‘No, I don’t think I am,’ said Isobel bravely, although she did not attempt to move, ‘not really hurt, but I think I have knocked the back of my head against something.’

‘Can’t you sit up?’ said Vivian. ‘If you could just sit up, and get into the house, we would bathe it with tepid water. That’s good for a bump I know. Mother always bathes Dorothy’s head with tepid water if she knocks it.’

‘I’ll try,’ said the little girl, and with his help she struggled to her feet, but when she tried to walk she turned so sick and giddy she was glad to sit down on the broken branch again. She was still sitting there when Ronald ran up triumphantly, out of breath with his long run round by the lodge. His look of triumph faded away, however, when he saw her.

‘Hallo, Isobel!’ he exclaimed, ‘I thought you were not hurt. You haven’t broken your arm or anything?’

‘Of course she hasn’t,’ answered his brother impatiently. ‘She is only feeling queer because she fell on the hard path and bumped her head. She’ll be all right in a minute.’

But Ronald did not like the look on his cousin’s face.

‘I think I’ll just run in for Aunt Dora,’ he said; and, without heeding Isobel’s protest, he turned and ran off.

Aunt Dora had gone out, however, and when he told his tale to Ralph, who had grown tired of waiting for the others to be taken, and had gone indoors, he only laughed at his cousin’s grave face and anxious voice.

‘Don’t be a muff,’ he said in his languid, patronising way. ‘If you were at school you would learn not to be so squeamish over every little knock that every one gets. I expect Isobel will be all right by now, and it will teach both Vivian and her not to get out of the garden like that. Father would be in a wax if he knew, I can tell you.’

Ronald felt inclined to remind Ralph that, if he were not in the habit of feeling squeamish over other people’s knocks, he made quite enough fuss over his own, for Isobel or Claude would laugh over a bruise or a cut which would send their elder brother into the house in tears; but he remembered that he was Ralph’s guest, so like a gentleman he kept back the hasty words, and set off in silence to see how it was faring with the party outside.

He met them just beyond the lodge; and, although Isobel was walking slowly, the colour had come back to her face, and she replied cheerily to his anxious question that she was all right, and that her head did not ache so badly now.

Perhaps if Mrs Osbourne had come home in time for the children’s early dinner she might not have been deceived so easily by the little girl’s assurances; but, thinking that the children would be quite safe as long as Ronald and Ralph were with them, she had stayed to spend the afternoon with an old aunt of Mr Osbourne’s whom she found in bed with a bad attack of bronchitis; and although Anne, who waited on the children at dinner-time, noticed the child’s dull eyes and listless manner, she only said, ‘Surely you are not hungry, Miss Isobel,’ as she took away her almost untouched plate; and Isobel, after dawdling about with Claude for a little, helping him to set out all his soldiers in a row on the edge of the bath, ready to salute as his new man-of-war was launched, lay down with a story-book on the schoolroom sofa, and soon fell into a heavy sleep.

The frost had given way, and the afternoon was dull and wet, so there was no prospect of getting out, and employment had to be found indoors. Soon Ralph, tired of his book, and more sociably inclined than usual, proposed that they should go up to an unused room at the top of the house, where he had a carpenter’s bench and a set of tools, and begin to hollow out a log which he intended making into a boat. Both Ronald and he were good craftsmen, and they were soon busy with hammer and chisel, while Vivian found employment for his fingers in whittling the corners off a piece of wood which was destined to form a funnel.

The noise of hammering prevented much talking, and his own thoughts did not seem to be very pleasant, for the cheery whistling, which Mrs Armitage was wont to say always told her when Vivian was about, soon stopped, and a frown gathered on his handsome little face. Presently he laid down the piece of wood and left the room.

The lie that he had told, or acted rather, in letting his aunt believe that he knew nothing of the lost pistol was weighing heavily on his conscience, and the remembrance of the paper parcel lying on the top of the wardrobe in his room, ready to be found by any prying servant, haunted him.

The very thought of the pistol was hateful to him now. He wondered why he had ever wanted it, and he wished that he could get rid of it anyhow, anywhere. But to do so was not so easy. He was never out alone, or he might have thrown it into one of the ponds on the Heath; and although the idea of burying it came into his mind, he remembered what Isobel had told him about Monarch the great watch-dog hiding bones in the corners of the flower-beds whenever he had a chance, and scraping them up again just when the gardener had sown some special kind of seed there or bedded out some favourite plant. No, it certainly would not be safe to hide the packet in the ground.

Suddenly a new idea flashed through his brain, and he quickened his steps. The hole that Isobel had let him see—that would be the very place to hide it in. If once he could put it there, without any one seeing him, and replace the old duster, it might lie for months before it was discovered; and even if it were discovered no one could trace the theft back to him. He would push it well along inside the hollow branch, so that even Isobel would not be likely to find it. How stupid of him not to have thought of it sooner! But there was time to do it yet, if only Aunt Dora would stay out a little longer. It was getting dark, and the gardeners would have gone home to tea. It was a splendid chance, if only he could slip out without being seen.

While these thoughts were passing through his mind he had gone to his room, and noiselessly locked the door and drawn a chair up to the wardrobe. He dared not put the chair on the washstand, as he had done in the morning, in case of another accident, but he dragged his father’s portmanteau forward and lifted it on to the chair, and when he was mounted on that he found he could, with an effort, just touch the parcel with the tips of his fingers. He looked round for something which would raise him a little higher. The travelling-rug—but that had been left downstairs; a pillow—that would do. Quick as thought he jumped to the floor, and pulled one of the pillows from under the coverlet. Taking off his slippers in case he soiled it, he mounted the unsteady pile. How soft and uneven the pillow was. His feet slipped and sank in it. And there were footsteps on the staircase. Was it Anne, or was it Aunt Dora come back? With a desperate effort he raised himself on tiptoe, and seized the parcel; and then, overbalancing himself, he fell with a crash, carrying both the pillow and the portmanteau with him.

At that moment a knock came to the door.

‘What in all the living world are you doing, Master Vivian?’

It was only Anne after all, and Vivian breathed freely again.

‘One moment, Anne,’ he cried; and, quick as lightning, he pushed the pillow under the coverlet again and returned the portmanteau to its place. Then he hid the little packet containing the pistol and caps under his jacket, and unlocked the door.

Anne, tired of waiting, had gone on to Ralph’s bedroom, and when she came back Vivian was gone and the room was empty.

‘Whatever has he been up to now?’ she said to herself, as she noted the tumbled bed-clothes and the overturned chair, which Vivian in his haste had forgotten to pick up. ‘That boy is up to mischief, or my name is not Anne Martin. This is the second time that he has fallen in this room to-day, and it’s clear that it was that chair he fell from.’

So saying, she picked up the chair, and, getting on to it, she proceeded to take a survey of the top of the wardrobe and the bed-hangings, but she found no trace of anything to arouse her suspicions; and with a shake of her head at the sight of the dust which had accumulated since she looked up there last, she got down again, muttering to herself as she did so, ‘If that young gentleman lived in this house I would see that the mistress put an end to the overturning of ewers and crumpling of pillows, especially when he was sleeping in the very best bedroom.’