s do not come up at all, quite unlike
dragon's teeth.

Of course H. O. and Noel were more unhappy than the rest of us. This was
only fair.

"How can we possibly prevent their getting to Maidstone?" Dicky said.
"Did you notice the red cuffs on their uniforms? Taken from the bodies
of dead English soldiers, I shouldn't wonder."

"If they're the old Greek kind of dragon's-teeth soldiers they ought to
fight each other to death," Noel said; "at least, if we had a helmet to
throw among them."

But none of us had, and it was decided that it would be no use for H.
O. to go back and throw his straw hat at them, though he wanted to.

Denny said, suddenly:

"Couldn't we alter the sign-posts, so that they wouldn't know the way to
Maidstone?"

Oswald saw that this was the time for true generalship to be shown. He
said:

"Fetch all the tools out of your chest--Dicky go too, there's a good
chap, and don't let him cut his legs with the saw." He did once,
tumbling over it. "Meet us at the cross-roads, you know, where we had
the Benevolent Bar. Courage and despatch, and look sharp about it."

When they had gone we hastened to the cross-roads, and there a great
idea occurred to Oswald. He used the forces at his command so ably that
in a very short time the board in the field which says "No thoroughfare.
Trespassers will be prosecuted" was set up in the middle of the road to
Maidstone. We put stones, from a heap by the road, behind it to make it
stand up.

Then Dicky and Denny came back, and Dicky shinned up the sign-post and
sawed off the two arms, and we nailed them up wrong, so that it said "To
Maidstone" on the Dover Road, and "To Dover" on the road to Maidstone.
We decided to leave the Trespassers board on the real Maidstone road, as
an extra guard.

Then we settled to start at once to warn Maidstone.

Some of us did not want the girls to go, but it would have been unkind
to say so. However, there was at least one breast that felt a pang of
joy when Dora and Daisy gave out that they would rather stay where they
were and tell anybody who came by which was the real road.

"Because it would be so dreadful if some one was going to buy pigs or
fetch a doctor or anything in a hurry and then found they had got to
Dover instead of where they wanted to go to," Dora said. But when it
came to dinner-time they went home, so that they were entirely out of
it. This often happens to them by some strange fatalism.

We left Martha t