re tearing my frock!' Then it happed that Sir Kay,
hurtling to the rescue, stopped short in his stride, catching sight
suddenly, through apple-boughs, of a gleam of scarlet afar off; while
the confused tramp of many horses, mingled with talk and laughter, was
borne to the ears of his fellow-champions and himself.

[Illustration: '_Once more were damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled,
and giants_']

'What is it?' inquired Tristram, sitting up and shaking out her curls;
while Lancelot forsook the clanging lists and trotted nimbly to the
boundary-hedge.

I stood spell-bound for a moment longer, and then, with a cry of
'Soldiers!' I was off to the hedge, Sir Tristram picking herself up and
scurrying after us.

Down the road they came, two and two, at an easy walk; scarlet flamed in
the eye, bits jingled and saddles squeaked delightfully; while the men,
in a halo of dust, smoked their short clays like the heroes they were.
In a swirl of intoxicating glory the troop clinked and clattered by,
while we shouted and waved, jumping up and down, and the big jolly
horsemen acknowledged the salute with easy condescension. The moment
they were past we were through the hedge and after them. Soldiers were
not the common stuff of everyday life. There had been nothing like this
since the winter before last, when on a certain afternoon--bare of leaf
and monochromatic in its hue of sodden fallow and frost-nipt
copse--suddenly the hounds had burst through the fence with their mellow
cry, and all the paddock was for the minute reverberant of thudding hoof
and dotted with glancing red. But this was better, since it could only
mean that blows and bloodshed were in the air.

'Is there going to be a battle?' panted Harold, hardly able to keep up
for excitement.

'Of course there is,' I replied. 'We're just in time. Come on!'

Perhaps I ought to have known better; and yet----? The pigs and poultry,
with whom we chiefly consorted, could instruct us little concerning the
peace that lapped in these latter days our seagirt realm. In the
schoolroom we were just now dallying with the Wars of the Roses; and
did not legends of the country-side inform us how cavaliers had once
galloped up and down these very lanes from their quarters in the
village? Here, now, were soldiers unmistakable; and if their business
was not fighting, what was it? Sniffing the joy of battle, we followed
hard in their tracks.

'Won't Edward be sorry,' puffed Harold, 'tha