had any real wish to become
burglars that we made a raid on the walnuts that autumn. I do not even
think that we cared very much about the walnuts themselves.

But when it is understood that the raid was to be a raid by night, or
rather in those very early hours of the morning which real burglars are
said almost to prefer; that it was necessary to provide ourselves with
thick sticks; that we should have to force the hedge and climb the
trees; that the said trees grew directly under the owner's bedroom
window, which made the chances of detection hazardously great; and that
walnut juice (as I have mentioned before) is of a peculiarly
unaccommodating nature, since it will neither disguise you at the time
nor wash off afterwards--it will be obvious that the dangers and
delights of the adventure were sufficient to blunt, for the moment, our
sense of the fact that we were deliberately going a-thieving.

"Shall we wear black masks?" said Jem.

On the whole I said "No," for I did not know where we should get them,
nor, if we did, how we should keep them on.

"If she has a blunderbuss, and fires," said I, "you must duck your
head, remember; but if she springs the rattle we must cut and run."

"Will her blunderbuss be loaded, do you think?" asked Jem. "Mother says
the one in _their_ room isn't; she told me so on Saturday. But she says
we're never to touch it, all the same, for you never can be sure about
things of that sort going off. Do you think Mrs. Wood's will be loaded?"

"It may be," said I, "and of course she might load it if she thought she
heard robbers."

"I heard father say that if you shoot a burglar outside it's murder,"
said Jem, who seemed rather troubled by the thought of the blunderbuss;
"but if you shoot him inside it's self-defence."

"Well, you may spring a rattle outside, anyway," said I; "and if hers
makes as much noise as ours, it'll be heard all the way here. So mind,
if she begins, you must jump down and cut home like mad."

Armed with these instructions and our thick sticks, Jem and I crept out
of the house before the sun was up or a bird awake. The air seemed cold
after our warm beds, and the dew was so drenching in the hedge bottoms,
and on the wayside weeds of our favourite lane, that we were soaked to
the knees before we began to force the hedge. I did not think that grass
and wild-flowers could have held so much wet. By the time that we had
crossed the orchard, and I was preparing to grip t