r at last,
wiping the perspiration from their faces, and fanning themselves with
their caps; while the provoking "Creek-creek" kept on as bad as ever for
a while, and then all at once stopped; and, though they waited and
listened attentively for a long while, not another sound could they
hear.

"Ain't it funny," said Philip, "that you never can tell where those
things are?"

"I think they must run very fast through the grass, so as to keep
seeming to be in different places," said Harry.

"Perhaps there's more than one," said Fred; "and they keep calling to
one another."

"Ah! perhaps there may be; but I think there's only one. Did you ever
read the `Boys' Country Book,' Fred? It's the jolliest book that was
ever written, ever so much better than `Sandford and Merton.' There's a
bit in it about some boys playing truant from school, and they go
hunting after a corncrake, as they call it there, and get into no end of
trouble, and jump over a hedge into a garden, and break the glass, and
get taken before a magistrate. Oh! I did like that book so. Phil and
I always have had a hunt after the corncrakes since we read that; but we
don't get taken before the magistrates for it."

The lads now returned towards their play-field to let the kite down, for
it was growing towards tea-time; but they walked along, very slowly, for
they were hot and tired with their exertions. They were walking along
by the hedge-side, when something took Harry's attention, and made him
leap over the great bed of nettles, which rose from the ditch, to the
further bank.

"Look here, boys," he shouted; "here's a jolly nest, full of eggs; only
look."

The others were at his side in a moment, and, sure enough, Harry had
found a nest in the bottom of the hedge worth finding, for it was the
nest of one of the hens, which had been laying astray till there were
fifteen eggs collected together, from which the old truant no doubt
meant to have a fine brood of chickens; and perhaps would have done so
but for Harry's discovery.

The eggs were put in Fred's handkerchief, for Harry's and Philip's were
left a hundred yards high in the air, when they went in chase of the
meadow-crake; and then they went across the field to where the kite
stick was left. They were at first too intent upon the eggs,--which
they counted three or four times over,--to think of the kite; but when
they did, and came to look, _the stick was gone_; the string was gone;
The Ki