TIT FOR TAT
"All in the nick
To play some trick
And frolic it with Ho! ho! ho!"
Though the natural-history portion of the Marshlands Museum grew so
rapidly that it threatened to overflow the cabinet, there were very few
antiquities in the collection, a Roman lamp, an Egyptian scarab, a few
old coins, and a Georgian snuff-box making up the whole of the scanty
store.
"I wish we could get a few really ancient things," said Cathy one day,
as she dusted and tidied the shelves. "Arrow-heads, I mean, and
spindle-whorls, and bronze brooches, and all those delightful finds you
hear of people digging up out of barrows. I'm sure there ought to be
some on these moors if we only knew where to look for them."
"Go and dig, then," suggested Dick. "You don't know what you might come
across."
"Why shouldn't I?" said Cathy. "There's a little round green mound just
in the corner of the field near the stone bridge that, I always think,
looks as if it ought to have something inside it. I shall certainly try
some day, when I have time."
Cathy generally carried out her intentions, so one afternoon about a
week later she came from the tool-house carrying two small garden spades
in her hand.
"Come along, Phil," she said. "We'll go and dig on the moors. It's a
good opportunity while the boys are out fishing. They always make such
fun of us. It will be quite time to tell them about it if we find
anything."
I was more than willing, so we started briskly up the steep stony road
towards the moors. It was a glorious autumn afternoon, with larks
singing overhead, and the heather a glow of soft purple below. Flocks of
plovers scared at our approach flew off with warning cries, and a
sea-gull or two, which had been feeding with them, flapped majestically
away towards the silvery line of the sea in the far distance. We
followed the course of the noisy brook for about a mile, till we reached
the little rough stone bridge which spanned the rapid, rushing water.
"Why do they make the bridge so much wider than the stream?" I asked, as
I looked down at the narrow channel under the arch.
"The water is low now," answered Cathy. "But you should see it when
there has been a storm upon the hills. It comes raging down in a great
foaming torrent, and it's so wide that sometimes you can scarcely get on
to the bridge. It looks grand then. I often think the country is even
more beautiful in winter than in summer, yet how few people who live in
towns ever dream of taking a Christmas holiday to see what the moors are
like in December!"
"They would find it dull, I expect," I suggested, for I could not
imagine Aunt Agatha or any of her friends leaving the diversions of
London to seek nature's solitudes in mid-winter.
"They don't know how to enjoy themselves," said Cathy, who had a fine
scorn for town-dwellers. "I would rather have a ramble over the fells in
the snow, or a scamper on Lady after the hounds, than all the parties
and pantomimes you could offer me."
The mound proved to be a small green hillock in the corner of a very
stony field close to the bridge.
"It's just the kind of place the prehistoric people used to bury their
chiefs under," declared Cathy. "Don't you remember the pictures I
showed you in Mother's book? There ought to be a skeleton in the middle,
and all the drinking-vessels and ornaments and things which they put in
the grave with him. If we pull a few of these stones away I think we
shall be able to dig; the soil seems fairly light."
"It's very soft here," I said, putting in my spade as I spoke and
turning up the turf without much difficulty.
"So it is. Perhaps a rabbit has burrowed there and loosened the earth.
We'll go on here, as it seems an easy place."
We had not dug more than a foot deep when Cathy's spade struck upon
something hard.
"Stop, Philippa! Be careful!" she cried. "If there's really anything
here we mustn't spoil it on any account."
She went down on her knees, and, putting her hand into the hole we had
dug, began to feel about cautiously.
"There is! There actually is!" she exclaimed, and with eyes shining with
delight she drew forth a small round vessel fashioned somewhat in the
shape of an urn. It appeared to be made of baked clay, and was broken
and crumbling round the top and stained with darkish marks below.
"It must be two thousand years old or more," said Cathy, in a voice of
rapture. "And there's something inside it too!"
She turned it carefully upside down, and out fell a few little bones and
five worn and rusty-looking coins.
"Now, this _is_ a discovery," she continued. "No doubt it was a Celtic
chief who was buried here. They would burn his body first, and put his
bones in the urn along with a few Roman coins. You can't see the marks
on them, can you? Never mind, we'll rub them up when we go home. What an
addition to the collection! _Sha'n't_ we crow over the boys, just!"
We filled up the hole in the mound again, and went home elated with
pride, feeling that the British Museum itself might justly envy us our
possession. The boys were hanging about the gate as though they were
waiting for our return, though they certainly could not have known where
we had been that afternoon.
"Hullo! What have you got there?" they cried, as Cathy produced her
treasure.
"Don't ever dare to chaff me again about antiquities," she announced.
"What do you say to this?"
It might have been fancy, but I certainly thought I saw a wink pass
between Dick and Edward. Perhaps, however, I was mistaken, since they
all seemed duly impressed.
"Looks a real mouldy, crumbly, museum old kind of a performance," said
Edward.
"Must be genuine if you dug it up yourself," remarked Dick.
"You'll have to write about it to the newspaper," put in George. "What
sport for you to see your name in print!"
"Go and ask Evans for a box of metal-polish," said Cathy. "I must
certainly find out what the coins are, they'll fix the date of the
mound."
Dick went with a readiness which might have aroused our suspicions, and
hung over her shoulder while she rubbed vigorously away at the
worn-looking specimens.
"It's certainly coming off!" she cried with enthusiasm. "Oh, look!
There is a mark like a head, and some writing, and--it looks
like--why--why----!"
She held the coin up critically, and her face fell; as well it might,
for when the dirt was cleaned away, there appeared the unmistakable
profile of Queen Victoria, while on the other side was the familiar
figure of Britannia and the remains of the words "Half Penny"!
"Dick!" cried Cathy with sudden enlightenment.
But the boys were doubled up in such convulsions of jubilant mirth that
it was a few moments before they could gasp out any remarks.
"Done you, old girl, for once!" spluttered George.
"Oh! I really didn't think you'd be taken in by such an easy fake!"
shrieked Edward.
"Made it ourselves," explained Dick, between bursts of chuckles. "We
modelled it in clay, after the pattern of those pictures in the mater's
antiquarian book, and baked it in the oven. Then we crumbled the top
away, and stained the bottom with iron-water, and filled it with pigs'
bones and all the oldest coppers we could muster. We didn't bury it too
deep, because we knew you'd never fag to dig half the mound away. I dare
say the place _was_ soft! No doubt a rabbit _had_ been burrowing there!
Oh, I say! I feel quite weak with laughing!"
Cathy and I bore our chaffing with the best grace we could.
"It was really rather clever of them," said Cathy. "Of course it's a
dreadful sell, but we might find something genuine some day; only the
next time we mean to go hunting for antiquities we won't tell the boys
beforehand!"
All the same the affair rankled in our minds, and we came to the
conclusion that if we could possibly seize an opportunity we should like
to play a trick upon these determined practical jokers, so as to pay
them back to some extent in their own coin. It was rather difficult to
hit upon anything fresh, Cathy scorning such stale devices as apple-pie
beds or stitched-up trousers.
"Those are as old as the hills," she said. "And would scarcely amuse
them. I want to find something quite out of the common, and if possible
to give them a good fright into the bargain."
"Ghosts," I suggested.
"Um! No. It's rather hard to get up a clever ghost, they find it out
directly. You see they've done it so often themselves to scare the
servants. Stop! I have it! Oh, I've thought of a most glorious idea!
Didn't you hear Edward reading out an account from the newspaper this
morning of a robbery at Thistleton Hall? Why shouldn't we have a sham
burglar, and rouse them all in the middle of the night? It would make a
splendid sensation."
Mr. and Mrs. Winstanley were away from home, spending a week in
Scotland, and Edward considered himself to be the head and safeguard of
the establishment during their absence, so the scheme really seemed very
feasible.
"We can dress up the figure of a burglar with some of Father's old
clothes stuffed with straw," said Cathy, "and let it down through the
trap-door in the end bedroom. But first of all we must pave the way.
Suppose we were to write a letter to Edward, as if it came from some
poor person, warning him that there's going to be an attack on the
house? It would make them ever so excited about it first, and then
they'd fall quite easily into the trap, and be ready to believe that
someone was really breaking in. Can you keep the secret, Phil,
absolutely tight and safe? We mustn't betray even by a look what we're
meditating."
"I think I can," I replied. "I'm rather clever at hiding my feelings. I
didn't let George guess last night that I knew where Dick had put his
cricket-cap, though I helped him to look for it everywhere except in the
right place."
We set to work at once so that we might have time to carry out our plans
before the squire and Mrs. Winstanley returned home. Cathy's letter was
a product of genius. It was written on the thinnest of village
note-paper, with the vilest and scratchiest of pens; the handwriting was
unformed and scrawling, and the tails of the letters were occasionally
smeared, as if a large and dirty finger had industriously and
laboriously pursued its way along the page. It ran thus, being guiltless
of stops--
"honered sir
"i take up my pen to tel you wot as bin on my mind and
i ope you wil not considder it a liburty but Honored Sir i feel
it is ony rite to warn you as your pa and ma is away and you the
squire as is to be and i dont like to split on my pals but there
is some as will ope to find your ouse not two well looked arfter
at nite and i can tel you no more at present for i dont want to
get into no trubble
"this is from
"one oo knows"
She addressed the envelope on the extreme top to--
"Mister edward winstanly
marchelands
near evverton",
put the stamp on upside down at the bottom, smeared the letter with her
thumb previously rubbed in the dust-pan, and dropped the epistle herself
into the village post-box.
It was extremely difficult to keep our faces the next morning when
Edward opened this strange communication, especially when we saw that he
took it in all seriousness.
"I say, Dick, look here!" he said, drawing his brother aside. "Just read
this, and see what you make of it. It appears to me there's going to be
an attempt to break into the house, and someone has written to warn us.
Whom could it possibly be from? There's no name or address on it."
Dick turned the dirty sheet of paper over and over in his hand, and
examined the envelope closely, but it was evident he could make no more
of it than Edward had done.
"What's the matter?" asked Cathy innocently. "What are you two putting
your heads together about?"
"I don't know whether I ought to tell you girls," said Edward in his
most fatherly manner. "I'm afraid you'll be scared out of your senses.
But after all perhaps it's wiser to let you know, for you're both pretty
plucky on the whole. Here, you may read the letter."
We seized it as if we had never seen it in our lives before, and looked
at each other with much apparent consternation.
"It's certainly meant for a warning," I said gravely.
"If I were you, Edward," remarked Cathy, "I should put it into the hands
of the village constable."
"Put it into the hands of the village fiddle-stick!" growled Edward.
"What help would poor old Gaskell be, I should like to know? He'd run
away if he saw the very tail of a burglar. I dare say he's all right to
lock up a drunken man on fair-day, or to slip the handcuffs on poachers
when the gamekeepers are holding them tight, but he'd be of no earthly
use in a case of this sort. Just you leave it to me. Dick and I will
undertake to look after the house. You girls had better lock your
bedroom door to-night; and be sure you don't let the servants get a hint
of it, or we shall have them all in hysterics."
So far our hoax had answered admirably, and Cathy and I retired upstairs
after breakfast in fits of delighted laughter.
"He looked so solemn over it," chuckled Cathy; "that touch about his
being the future squire was most effective. He feels he's quite a man
and must defend the family property."
"I nearly exploded when Dick sniffed the letter, and said he could tell
it was written by a clodhopper, because it smelled of their abominable
tobacco!" said I.
"We'd better get on with our burglar," said Cathy. "I have Father's old
tweed suit and his fishing-boots here, and I brought up a whole sackful
of hay yesterday, it's underneath my bed. Have you locked the door? No
one must come in on any account."
We first securely stitched the coat and trousers together, fastened the
trousers firmly into the fishing-boots, sewed a pair of gloves on to the
ends of the sleeves to represent hands, and then stuffed the whole
figure tightly with hay. The head was a little more difficult to manage.
We tried at first to make it out of a sponge-bag, but that did not seem
to answer at all; so in the end Cathy fetched a large mangold out of the
field, which had a warty protuberance on one side very much resembling a
human nose, and by the aid of two shoe-buttons stuck in with hair-pins
for eyes, and a slit cut with a penknife for a mouth, we really made a
very creditable burglar countenance. We mounted it on a sharpened stick,
which we rammed down into the body, crowned it with a soft felt hat,
tied a silk handkerchief round its neck to cover up deficiencies, and
then sat down and rejoiced over our handiwork.
"Doesn't he look a splendid Bill Sykes?" cried Cathy. "In the dark I'm
sure anyone would think he was real. Those fishing-boots look very
clumping and murderous."
"He's not very heavy either," I said, lifting the figure easily in my
arms, "I think you'll be able to manage him."
The place where we intended to spring our surprise on the boys was a
large unoccupied bedroom at the end of the passage, generally called the
"north room". It had a trap-door in the ceiling which opened out on to a
flat roof, and by climbing upon the edge of Cathy's balcony it was
extremely easy to step on to this roof; indeed we had often done so to
watch the sunset, or to get a good view of the surrounding country. We
arranged that about midnight Cathy should mount up here, I should then
hand the burglar to her, and after opening the trap-door she should
allow his legs to dangle through it as though he were in the very act
of forcing an entrance into the room. When she was ready I was to give
the alarm, and we trusted that in the faint moonlight the boys would not
readily discover the imposture. We hid "Bill Sykes" safely away under
the bed, and went downstairs again, feeling all impatience for the
evening to arrive.
Edward was extremely particular about locking up that night--he examined
every bolt and bar, closed all the shutters, put a screw in the
back-kitchen window and a wedge in the cellar door, and finally went
round the whole establishment with a lantern, peeping into pantries and
china-closets, and even the housemaid's cupboard under the stairs, to
make quite sure that nobody was concealed there with nefarious intent.
He retired to bed at last with a revolver under his pillow; Dick took
the air-gun, which he had borrowed from Captain Vernon, while George,
not being able to obtain any firearms (the squire having wisely locked
up his gun cupboard and taken the key away with him), was obliged to
content himself with the garden syringe well charged with water, with
which he could certainly give anyone a decidedly cold reception. It was
past ten o'clock before we were all in our rooms, and Cathy and I
decided that we would not go to bed, as we were much too excited to feel
sleepy; so we sat eating apples and reading to pass the time, as we did
not dare to talk much for fear the boys should overhear us. At ten
minutes to twelve we opened our window and looked out. It was a
beautiful moonlight night, just bright enough to make the room rather
light without showing any object too plainly, and nothing could be more
fortunate for the success of our plot.
Cathy climbed cautiously on to the roof, and I managed to hand up the
burglar--with some difficulty, I own, for if he were not heavy he was
decidedly bulky. She had tied a rope under his arms so that she might
dangle him more securely, and she very soon unfastened the trap-door and
let his legs down through the opening.
"Are you ready?" I called under my breath, as I watched her from the
balcony.
"Hush! Yes, just got him right!" she whispered; "you may go now.
Remember, Edward first!"
It was an exciting moment. I ran down the passage, and tapped softly at
Edward's door.
"Oh, do come quick!" I said in a low voice, which I am sure must have
sounded most agitated. "We've heard such strange noises, and we can't
help thinking that someone's trying to break into the north room!"
Edward appeared in an instant, fully dressed, and armed with his
revolver. I am sure that even if he had lain down on his bed, he had
neither removed his clothes nor closed his eyes. He looked rather white,
but I must say very determined and self-possessed.
"Have you roused the others?" he whispered. "Don't make any noise, and
perhaps we may be able to catch him. You'd better go back to Cathy, and
both of you stay in your room. This thing's not fit for girls, and you
might get hurt."
Dick and George, who slept in the adjoining bedroom, arrived on the
scene with equal promptitude, and the three crept silently down the
passage, while I, after pretending to retire, followed at a little
distance to watch the fun. Arrived at the north room they noiselessly
opened the door, and sprang back for a moment, looking rather aghast,
for dangling through the opening in the roof appeared the large
fishing-boots of our burglar, moving about in such a natural and
lifelike manner, that it was no wonder the boys were deceived.
"Hullo! Who's that?" cried Edward in a firm tone, levelling his revolver
at the figure.
The legs twitched, and came slightly lower, so that a portion of the
body might be seen through the trap-door.
"Stop, or I'll fire!" declared Dick, with a suspicious little quaver in
his voice.
"If you move an inch, I'll kill you!" roared valiant George, though his
weapon was certainly the least deadly of the three.
Cathy let the burglar down a good piece, so that his head and his felt
hat now appeared, while his arms seemed to be waving about in a wild
demonstration of defiance. Bang! went both revolver and air-gun at the
same instant, while the syringe discharged its contents freely over the
room, George in his agitation having somewhat miscalculated his aim.
Cathy loosed the rope, and "Bill Sykes" dropped with a heavy plump on to
the floor below, his mangold head striking the bed-post with great
violence. A dead silence followed.
"Have we done for him, or is he only foxing?" whispered George.
Cathy from above uttered a low groan.
"He's still alive!" gasped Dick.
"Ay, but he's hurt," said Edward. "We'd better see what damage is done.
Be ready, Dick, to hold his legs, in case he should jump up suddenly."
They advanced with extreme caution towards the figure, which lay
stretched out in a most natural manner, face downwards, in the patch of
moonlight which fell through the window. Dick seized the fishing-boots,
and held them securely while Edward made a firm grasp at the arm.
Perhaps something in its consistency felt unusual, for with a cry he
turned the burglar over. The sudden movement loosened the mangold head,
which we had not been able to fasten on very securely, and, rolling off
with a bound, it fell at the feet of the astounded George.
A yell of disgusted wrath arose from the indignant boys, and I could not
forbear to run into the room, clapping my hands in my glee, while Cathy
peered down through the trap-door in rejoicing triumph.
"Done you this time, old fellows!" cried Cathy.
"Oh, I didn't think you'd be taken in by such an easy fake!" I echoed.
"Made it ourselves!" exploded Cathy from above. "Only Father's old suit
stuffed with hay! And you thought you had done for him! I think I could
tell you who sent that letter if you were to ask me!"
"Come down, you young wretch!" said Edward. "If you let yourself drop,
I'll catch you. Well, of all the sells I've ever had in my life, this is
about the biggest. So you wrote that precious letter, did you? It was
uncommonly smartly done, too! And as for this countenance, it's simply
ripping!"
And he burst into a roar as he picked up the head of our decapitated
house-breaker.
I really think the boys laughed as much as we did, for they were
good-natured enough not to mind a joke at their own expense.
"You've jolly well taken us in for once," said Dick. "And I give you the
credit for it. I didn't think you girls could have got it all up so
neatly. You've scored no end, and I suppose now you'll be satisfied, and
cry quits about the antiquities."