ion when Hands and he plainly
perceived a ghost in the garden, there was every cause for real alarm,
they merely laughed.

The weather grew warmer as August moved on, and Michael with Mr. Vernon
and Mr. Lodge used sometimes to plunge into the depths of the country,
there to construe Ovid and Lucian while the other boys worked at French
with the Frenchman who came in from St. Corentin to teach them. Michael
enjoyed these expeditions with Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge. They would sit
down in the lush grass of a shady green lane, close to a pool where the
bull-frogs croaked. Michael would construe the tale of Deucalion and
Pyrrha to Mr. Lodge, while Mr. Vernon lay on his back and smoked a large
pipe. Then a White Admiral butterfly would soar round the oak trees, and
Ovid would be thrown behind them like Deucalion's stones; while Michael
and Mr. Vernon and Mr. Lodge manoeuvred and shouted and ran up and
down, until the White Admiral was either safely bottled with the cyanide
of potassium or soared away out of sight. When Ovid was finished for the
day, Mr. Lodge used to light a big pipe and lie on his back, while
Michael construed the Dialogue of Charon to Mr. Vernon. Then an Oak
Eggar moth would fly with tumbling reckless flight beyond the pool,
luring Michael and Mr. Lodge and Mr. Vernon to charge through in
pursuit, not deterred by the vivid green slime of the wayside water as
the ghosts were deterred by gloomy Styx. Indeed, as the hot August days
went by, each one was marked by its butterflies more definitely than by
anything else. Michael thought that France was a much better place for
collecting them than England. Scarce Swallow-tails and Ordinary
Swallow-tails haunted the cliffs majestically. Clouded Yellows were
chased across the fields of clover. Purple Emperors and Camberwell
Beauties and Bath Whites were all as frequent as Heath Browns at home.
Once, they all went a long expedition to Bluebeard's Castle on the other
side of the Loire, and, while they sat in a garden cafe, drinking their
grenadine sucree, hundreds of Silver-washed Fritillaries appeared over
the tables. How the fat French bourgeois stared to see these mad English
boys chasing butterflies in their sunny bee-haunted garden. But how
lovely the Fritillaries looked, set upside down to show their powdered
green and rosy wings washed by silver streaks. Perhaps the most exciting
catch of all happened, close to the shutting in of a September dusk, in
the avenue o