omes scouting in the field. It
teaches you a lot.

I was strongly addicted to it as a child, and the craft learned in
that innocent field of sport has stood me in good stead in many a
critical time since. To lie flat in a furrow among the currant bushes
when I had not time to reach the neighbouring box bushes before
the pursuer came in sight taught me the value of not using the most
obvious cover, since it would at once be searched. The hunters went at
once to the box bushes as the likely spot, while I could watch their
doings from among the stems of the currant bushes.

Often I have seen hostile scouts searching the obvious bits of cover,
but they did not find _me_ there; and, like the elephant hunter among
the fern trees, or a boar in a cotton crop, so a boy in the currant
bushes is invisible to the enemy, while he can watch every move of the
enemy's legs.

This I found of value when I came to be pursued by mounted military
police, who suspected me of being a spy at some manoeuvres abroad.
After a rare chase I scrambled over a wall and dropped into an orchard
of low fruit trees. Here squatting in a ditch, I watched the legs of
the gendarmes' horses while they quartered the plantation, and when
they drew away from me I crept to the bank of a deep water channel
which formed one of the boundaries of the enclosure. Here I found
a small plank bridge by which I could cross, but before doing so I
loosened the near end, and passed over, dragging the plank after me.

On the far side the country was open, and before I had gone far the
gendarmes spied me, and after a hurried consultation, dashed off at
a gallop for the nearest bridge, half a mile away. I promptly turned
back, replaced my bridge and recrossed the stream, throwing the plank
into the river, and made my way past the village to the next station
down the line while the horsemen were still hunting for me in the
wrong place.

Another secret that one picked up at the game of Hide-and-Seek was,
if possible, to get above the level of the hunter's eye, and to
"freeze"--that is, to sit tight without a movement, and, although not
in actual concealment, you are very apt to escape notice by so doing.
I found it out long ago by lying flat along the top of an ivy-clad
wall when my pursuers passed within a few feet of me without looking
up at me. I put it to the proof later on by sitting on a bank beside
the road, just above the height of a man, but so near that I might
hav