the three went up the hill. "You're
spies and traitors--that's what you are."

But the girls were too glad to have Peter between them, safe and free,
and on the way to Three Chimneys and not to the Police Station, to mind
much what he said.

"We DID say it was us as much as you," said Bobbie, gently.

"Well--and it wasn't."

"It would have come to the same thing in Courts with judges," said
Phyllis. "Don't be snarky, Peter. It isn't our fault your secrets are so
jolly easy to find out." She took his arm, and he let her.

"There's an awful lot of coal in the cellar, anyhow," he went on.

"Oh, don't!" said Bobbie. "I don't think we ought to be glad about
THAT."

"I don't know," said Peter, plucking up a spirit. "I'm not at all sure,
even now, that mining is a crime."

But the girls were quite sure. And they were also quite sure that he was
quite sure, however little he cared to own it.

Chapter III. The old gentleman.

After the adventure of Peter's Coal-mine, it seemed well to the children
to keep away from the station--but they did not, they could not, keep
away from the railway. They had lived all their lives in a street where
cabs and omnibuses rumbled by at all hours, and the carts of butchers
and bakers and candlestick makers (I never saw a candlestick-maker's
cart; did you?) might occur at any moment. Here in the deep silence of
the sleeping country the only things that went by were the trains. They
seemed to be all that was left to link the children to the old life that
had once been theirs. Straight down the hill in front of Three Chimneys
the daily passage of their six feet began to mark a path across the
crisp, short turf. They began to know the hours when certain trains
passed, and they gave names to them. The 9.15 up was called the Green
Dragon. The 10.7 down was the Worm of Wantley. The midnight town
express, whose shrieking rush they sometimes woke from their dreams
to hear, was the Fearsome Fly-by-night. Peter got up once, in chill
starshine, and, peeping at it through his curtains, named it on the
spot.

It was by the Green Dragon that the old gentleman travelled. He was a
very nice-looking old gentleman, and he looked as if he were nice,
too, which is not at all the same thing. He had a fresh-coloured,
clean-shaven face and white hair, and he wore rather odd-shaped collars
and a top-hat that wasn't exactly the same kind as other people's. Of
course the children didn't see all this at