he grandly scored
trunk of the nearest walnut-tree with my chilly legs, the heavy peeling,
the hard cracking, and the tedious picking of a green walnut was as
little pleasurable a notion as I had in my brain.

All the same, I said (as firmly as my chattering teeth would allow) that
I was very glad we had come when we did, for that there certainly were
fewer walnuts on the tree than there had been the day before.

"She's been at them," said I, almost indignantly.

"Pickling," responded Jem with gloomy conciseness; and spurred by this
discovery to fresh enthusiasm for our exploit, we promptly planned
operations.

"I'll go up the tree," said I, "and beat, and you can pick them as they
fall."

Jem was, I fear, only too well accustomed to my arrogating the first
place in our joint undertakings, and after giving me "a leg up" to an
available bit of foothold, and handing up my stick, he waited patiently
below to gather what I beat down.

The walnuts were few and far between, to say nothing of leaves between,
which in walnut-trees are large. The morning twilight was dim, my hands
were cold and feebler than my resolution. I had battered down a lot of
leaves and twigs, and two or three walnuts; the sun had got up at last,
but rather slowly, as if he found the morning chillier than he expected,
and a few rays were darting here and there across the lane, when Jem
gave a warning "Hush!" and I left off rustling in time to hear Mrs.
Wood's bedroom lattice opened, and to catch sight of something pushed
out into the morning mists.

"Who's there?" said the school-mistress.

Neither Jem nor I took upon us to inform her, and we were both seized
with anxiety to know what was at the window. He was too low down and I
too much buried in foliage to see clearly. Was it the rattle? I took a
hasty step downwards at the thought. Or was it the blunderbuss? In my
sudden move I slipped on the dew-damped branch, and cracked a rotten one
with my elbow, which made an appalling crash in the early stillness, and
sent a walnut--pop! on to Jem's hat, who had already ducked to avoid the
fire of the blunderbuss, and now fell on his face under the fullest
conviction that he had been shot.

"Who's there?" said the school-mistress, and (my tumble having brought
me into a more exposed position) she added, "Is that you, Jack and Jem?"

"It's me," said I, ungrammatically but stoutly, hoping that Jem at any
rate would slip off.

But he had recovered him