r journey.
It was a risk no experienced poacher would have taken; but old heads,
alas! do not grow on young shoulders.

He dismounted about the middle of the wood, informed the other two of
his purpose (to the surprise of Wiggins who had not been informed of
his friends' latest exploits) and made his dispositions. When they
came to the corner of the wood, Erebus rode on up the road to keep a
lookout ahead. The Terror slipped off his bicycle, and so did Wiggins.
Wiggins held the two bicycles. The Terror listened. The wood was very
still in its winter silence. He slipped through the hedge into it, and
presently came back bringing with him a very nice young pheasant
indeed. He put it into the basket of his bicycle, and mounted.

They had barely started when a keeper sprang out of the hedge, thirty
yards ahead, and came running toward them, shouting in a very daunting
fashion as he came. There was neither time nor room to turn. They
rode on; and the keeper made for the Terror. The Terror swerved; and
the keeper swerved. Wiggins ran bang into the keeper; and they came to
the ground together as the Terror shot ahead, pedaling as hard as he
could.

He caught up Erebus, and his cry of "Keeper!" set her racing beside
him; but both of them kept looking back for Wiggins; and presently,
when no Wiggins appeared, with one accord they slowed down, stopped and
dismounted.

"The keeper's got him. This is a mess!" said the Terror, who was
panting a little from their spurt.

"If only it had been one of us!" cried Erebus. "Whatever are we to do?"

"If that beastly keeper hadn't seen me with the pheasant, I'd get
Wiggins away, somehow," said the Terror. "But, as it is, it's me they
really want; and I'd get fined to a dead certainty. Come on, let's go
back and see what's happened to him. You scout on ahead. Nobody knows
you're in it."

"All right," said Erebus; and she mounted briskly.

She rode back through the wood slowly, her keen eyes straining for a
sign of an ambush. The Terror followed her at a distance of sixty
yards, ready to jump off, turn his machine, and fly should she give the
alarm. They got no sight of Wiggins till they came, just beyond the
end of the wood, to the lodges of Great Deeping Park; then, half-way up
the drive, they saw the keeper and his prey. The keeper held Wiggins
with his left hand and wheeled the captured bicycle with his right.
The Twins dismounted. Even at that distance they c