nd saying awful things," Red answered.

"Well, I _am_ obliged to you," I said. "Anything else?"

"There's a lot of this stuff under the floor," said Dart, pointing with
his foot at a half-crown which lay on the table.

"Is there? Whereabouts?" said I. "Oh, but I was forgetting; I can look
after that myself."

"Yes, of course you can," they said; "and lots of things happened here
before you came. We were watching. The old man and the woman, they were
the worst, weren't they, Red?"

"Do you mean you've been here before?" I asked.

"No, no, but to-night we were looking at them, like we do at school."

This was beyond me, and I thought it would be of no use to ask for more
explanations. Besides, just at this moment we heard the bell. They all
clambered down either me or the chairs or the tablecloth. Slim lingered
a moment to say, "You'll look out, won't you?" and then followed the
rest on to the window-sill, where, taking the time from Captain Wag,
they all stood in a row, bowed with their caps off, straightened up
again, each sang one note, which combined into a wonderful chord, faced
round and disappeared. I followed them to the window and saw the
inhabitants of the house separating and going to their homes with the
young ones capering round them. One or two of the elders--Wag's father
in particular--looked up at me, paused in their walk, and bowed gravely,
which courtesy I returned. I went on gazing until the lawn was a blank
once more, and then, closing and fastening the sitting-room window, I
betook myself to the bedroom.

VII

THE BAT-BALL

It had certainly been an eventful day and evening, and I felt that my
adventures could not be quite at an end yet, for I had still to find out
what new power or sense the Fourth Jar had brought me. I stood and
thought, and tried quite vainly to detect some difference in myself. And
then I went to the window and drew the curtain aside and looked out on
the road, and within a few minutes I began to understand.

There came walking rapidly along the road a young man, and he turned in
at the garden gate and came straight up the path to the house door. I
began to be surprised, not at his coming, for it was not so very late,
but at the look of him. He was young, as I said, rather red-faced, but
not bad-looking; of the class of a farmer, I thought. He wore biggish
brown whiskers--which is not common nowadays--and his hair was rather
long at the back--which also is not