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 We told him exactly. And even the colonel then owned there might be something in it.

"Can you show me the place where they are on the map?" he asked.

"Not on the map, we can't," said Dicky; "at least, I don't think so, but on the ground we could. We could take you there in a quarter of an hour."

The Cocked-Hatted One looked at the colonel, who returned his scrutiny; then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, we've got to do something," he said, as if to himself. "Lead on, Macduff!"

The colonel roused his soldiery from their stupor of pipes by words of command which the present author is sorry he can't remember.

Then he bade us boys lead the way. I tell you it felt fine, marching at the head of a regiment. Alice got a lift on the Cocked-Hatted One's horse. It was a red-roan steed of might, exactly as if it had been in a ballad. They call a gray-roan a "blue" in South Africa, the Cocked-Hatted One said.

We led the British army by unfrequented lanes till we got to the gate of Sugden's Waste Wake pasture. Then the colonel called a whispered halt, and choosing two of us to guide him, the dauntless and discerning commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are