Page:The golden age.djvu/79

ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS [sic]ing 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 43