the sedge beside the pebbly shore; and
naught to see but quiet valleys, primrose lanes, and Warwick orchards
white with bloom, stretching away to the misty hills.

But still they stood and looked and listened.

The wind came stealing up out of the south, soft and warm and sweet and
still, moving the ripples upon the river with gray gusts; and, scudding
free before the wind, a dog came trotting up the road with wet pink
tongue and sidelong gait. At the throat of Clopton bridge he stopped and
scanned the way with dubious eye, then clapped his tail between his legs
and bolted for the town. The laughing shout that followed him into the
Warwick road seemed not to die away, but to linger in the air like the
drowsy hum of bees--a hum that came and went at intervals upon the
shifting wind, and grew by littles, taking body till it came unbroken as
a long, low, distance-muffled murmur from the south, so faint as
scarcely to be heard.

Nick Attwood pricked his keen young ears. "They're coming, Robin--hark
'e to the trampling!"

Robin Getley held his breath and turned his ear toward the south. The
far-off murmur was a mutter now, defined and positive, and, as the two
friends listened, grew into a drumming roll, and all at once above it
came a shrill, high sound like the buzzing of a gnat close by the ear.

Little Tom Davenant dropped from the finger-post, and came running up
from the fork of the Banbury road, his feet making little white puffs in
the dust as he flew. "They are coming! they are coming!" he shrieked
as he ran.

Then up to his feet sprang Robin Getley, upon the saddle-backed
coping-stones, his hand upon Nick Attwood's head to steady himself, and
looked away where the rippling Stour ran like a thread of silver beside
the dust-buff London road, and the little church of Atherstone stood
blue against the rolling Cotswold Hills.

"They are coming! they are coming!" shrilled little Tom, and scrambled
up the coping like a squirrel up a rail.

A stir ran out along the guard-wall, some crying out, some starting up.
"Sit down! sit down!" cried others, peering askance at the water
gurgling green down below. "Sit down, or we shall all be off!"

Robin held his hand above his eyes. A cloud of dust was rising from the
London road and drifting off across the fields like smoke when the old
ricks burn in damp weather--a long, broad-sheeted mist; and in it were
bits of moving gold, shreds of bright colors vaguely seen, and sil