nal inglorious fashion, and afterwards we were
ashamed. We had our days of adventure, but they were natural accidents,
our own adventures. There was one hot day when several of us, walking
out towards Maidstone, were incited by the devil to despise ginger beer,
and we fuddled ourselves dreadfully with ale; and a time when our young
minds were infected to the pitch of buying pistols, by the legend of
the Wild West. Young Roots from Highbury came back with a revolver and
cartridges, and we went off six strong to live a free wild life one
holiday afternoon. We fired our first shot deep in the old flint mine at
Chiselstead, and nearly burst our ear drums; then we fired in a primrose
studded wood by Pickthorn Green, and I gave a false alarm of "keeper,"
and we fled in disorder for a mile. After which Roots suddenly shot at
a pheasant in the high road by Chiselstead, and then young Barker told
lies about the severity of the game laws and made Roots sore afraid, and
we hid the pistol in a dry ditch outside the school field. A day or so
after we got in again, and ignoring a certain fouling and rusting of the
barrel, tried for a rabbit at three hundred yards. Young Roots blew
a molehill at twenty paces into a dust cloud, burnt his fingers, and
scorched his face; and the weapon having once displayed this strange
disposition to flame back upon the shooter, was not subsequently fired.

One main source of excitement for us was "cheeking" people in vans and
carts upon the Goudhurst road; and getting myself into a monstrous white
mess in the chalk pits beyond the village, and catching yellow jaundice
as a sequel to bathing stark naked with three other Adamites, old Ewart
leading that function, in the rivulet across Hickson's meadows, are
among my memorabilia. Those free imaginative afternoons! how much they
were for us! how much they did for us! All streams came from the then
undiscovered "sources of the Nile" in those days, all thickets were
Indian jungles, and our best game, I say it with pride, I invented. I
got it out of the Bladesover saloon. We found a wood where "Trespassing"
was forbidden, and did the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand" through it from
end to end, cutting our way bravely through a host of nettle beds that
barred our path, and not forgetting to weep and kneel when at last we
emerged within sight of the High Road Sea. So we have burst at times,
weeping and rejoicing, upon startled wayfarers. Usually I took the part
of