started back with a little cry of surprise.

'Hallo!' he said, 'here comes the old woman who stole my pigtail.'

Fred and Ping Wang sprang to their feet, and saw the cart in which they
had ridden coming slowly along the road.

'I say, I should like to recover my pigtail,' said Charlie. 'Let us run
out and take it from her.'

'No, no,' Ping Wang protested. 'While we were struggling to get hold of
it some one would be sure to see us. There's a man coming along now.'

The occupants of the cart began to speak to the man some moments before
he met them. After a time the woman produced Charlie's pigtail, and
handed it to the man to look at. For a few moments he examined it
carefully, and apparently he came to the conclusion that he had as much
right to it as the woman, for suddenly he rushed off with it. The
cart-owner shouted to him to come back; his wife shuffled out of the
cart and hobbled a yard or two after the thief, but soon realised that
she would not be able to catch him. The Pages and Ping Wang thoroughly
enjoyed the scene.

'The old lady does not appear to be in a hurry to go,' Charlie remarked.
'Hallo! she's coming over to look at the heads.'

But when the woman had hobbled to the nearest pole, she contented
herself with looking up at its grim burden, and then began to hobble
back towards her cart. But, before she had gone five yards, she noticed
the ruin in which the Pages and Ping Wang were hiding. She stood still
and gazed at it.

'She is coming over here to see what this place is!' said Charlie.

'She is,' Fred declared, and, as he spoke, the woman began to hobble in
their direction.

'What shall we do?' Charlie whispered.

'Stay here,' Ping Wang answered. 'We must lie down flat and then she may
overlook us.'

'Down we go,' Fred said; 'she's very near.'

About a minute later they heard the woman approach the hole in the wall,
through which they had been watching her. From a grunt of annoyance
which she uttered, they knew that she was not tall enough to see
through. They could hear her hobbling round to the next hole, and from
another grunt they guessed that she found it, like the other, above her
reach. She toddled round to the third hole, which was lower down. When
they heard her stop before it, they held their breath and lay
motionless, wondering whether she would see them. Their suspense was
soon at an end.

'Foreigners!' she shouted, wildly.

'Come on, Fred--come on, Ping Wang!' cried C