d presently there was a little rustle through the bushes, and
there stood the idiot before them, still whistling. They were at first
a little frightened, but too much astonished to cry out; and the ragged
creature (for he had just the same appearance as when they had first
seen him) grinned at them so kindly that they could not help smiling
back. He looked round him nervously for a moment and then holding up
his finger as if to bid them keep silence, he scrambled down from the
fence to them, and produced a rudely made cage of hazel-wands from
under his coat. This he opened, and took from it a bullfinch, which
perched on his finger without attempting to fly away. Then he whistled
a few notes and the bird began to pipe a little tune, though the man
was obliged to remind him of his note now and again. Then he whistled
few more notes and the bird piped another tune or part of one, after
which he lifted the bird to his face and the little creature laid its
beak against his lips. He then listened nervously for a few seconds,
shut he bird up in the cage again, put the cage into little Elsie's
hand, nodding and smiling all the time, jumped over the fence into the
wood and was gone.

[Illustration: The bird began to pipe a little tune.]

The Corporal came back a few minutes later, very hot, out of breath,
and very nearly out of temper. He had caught sight of some one in the
wood, he said, a poacher or some one who had no business there, and
made sure to have caught him or at any rate to have found out who he
was. But when he heard the children's story he opened his eyes wide
and said that they had better go home at once; and that very same
evening he rode over to Fitzdenys Court with a letter from Lady Eleanor
to Colonel George. But the children were far too much taken up by the
bullfinch to think of anything else, for the bird took courage to pipe
a little to Dick's whistling, and then they discovered that one of his
tunes was "The British Grenadiers."

Colonel George duly came over next morning and was not a little
astonished to hear what had happened, but could not explain it in the
least. "The children will solve this mystery before I shall, you will
see," he said to Lady Eleanor, laughing, "and I may as well give up the
attempt."

"But do you not think that this proves these two people to be harmless
and innocent?" asked Lady Eleanor.

"You judged them to be so from the first," he answered, "and that is
suff