and up there against the twee, and I'll make good shots. You don't
mind if I does hurt you a bit, does you?"

"But I don't want to be shotted down dead," replied Orion.

"No, I won't go as far as that. It's only Aunt Jane and Miss Wamsay
who is to be shotted dead; but you'll have to be shotted, 'cos I must
pwactice how to do it."

"But couldn't you practice against the tree without me standing
there?" said Orion, who had no fancy to have even this very blunt
arrow directed at his face.

CHAPTER XV.

MOTHER RODESIA.

After some very slight persuasion Diana induced Orion to put his back
up against an oak tree and to allow her to shoot at him. He quickly
discovered that he had little or no cause for fear. Diana's arrows,
wielded with all the cunning she possessed, from the crooked bow,
never went anywhere near him. They fell on the grass and startled the
birds, and one little baby rabbit ran quite away, and some squirrels
looked down at the children through the thick trees; but Orion had
very little chance of getting hurt.

"It's awfu' difficult," said Diana, whose face grew redder and redder
with her efforts. "If it don't shoot pwoper, Aunt Jane won't get
shotted to-night. What is to be done? Suppose you was to twy for a
bit, Orion?"

Orion was only too anxious to accede to this proposition. He took the
bow and arrow and made valiant efforts, but in the course of his
endeavors to shoot properly, the badly made bow suddenly snapped in
two, and Diana, in her discomfiture, and the dashing to the ground of
her hopes, burst into tears.

"You is bad boy," she cried. "See what you's done. Back we goes to
slav'ry--to Aunt Jane and Miss Wamsay. You is a bad, howid boy."

"I aren't," said Orion, who had a very easily aroused temper. "It's
you that's a horrid little girl."

"Come, children; what's all this noise about?" said a voice in their
ears.

They turned abruptly, forgetting on the instant their own cause of
quarrel, and saw a tall, swarthy-looking woman coming towards them. By
this time it was beginning to get dark in the wood, but they could see
the figure of the woman quite distinctly. She came close to them, and
then, putting her arms akimbo, surveyed them both with a certain queer
expression on her face.

"Well, my little dears," she said, "and what may you two be doing in
this part of the wood?"

"We is pweparing to have our enemies shotted," answered Diana, in a
calm, but sturdy, voice. "What