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СКАЧАТЬ right there,” said the man, who held him. “Stow your jaw, you young rip, and come along to the station.”

      “Oh, no,” cried in the darkness an agonised voice that was not Peter’s.

      “Not the POLICE station!” said another voice from the darkness.

      “Not yet,” said the Station Master. “The Railway Station first. Why, it’s a regular gang. Any more of you?”

      “Only us,” said Bobbie and Phyllis, coming out of the shadow of another truck labelled Staveley Colliery, and bearing on it the legend in white chalk: ‘Wanted in No. 1 Road.’

      “What do you mean by spying on a fellow like this?” said Peter, angrily.

      “Time someone did spy on you, I think,” said the Station Master. “Come along to the station.”

      “Oh, DON’T!” said Bobbie. “Can’t you decide NOW what you’ll do to us? It’s our fault just as much as Peter’s. We helped to carry the coal away—and we knew where he got it.”

      “No, you didn’t,” said Peter.

      “Yes, we did,” said Bobbie. “We knew all the time. We only pretended we didn’t just to humour you.”

      Peter’s cup was full. He had mined for coal, he had struck coal, he had been caught, and now he learned that his sisters had ‘humoured’ him.

      “Don’t hold me!” he said. “I won’t run away.”

      The Station Master loosed Peter’s collar, struck a match and looked at them by its flickering light.

      “Why,” said he, “you’re the children from the Three Chimneys up yonder. So nicely dressed, too. Tell me now, what made you do such a thing? Haven’t you ever been to church or learned your catechism or anything, not to know it’s wicked to steal?” He spoke much more gently now, and Peter said:—

      “I didn’t think it was stealing. I was almost sure it wasn’t. I thought if I took it from the outside part of the heap, perhaps it would be. But in the middle I thought I could fairly count it only mining. It’ll take thousands of years for you to burn up all that coal and get to the middle parts.”

      “Not quite. But did you do it for a lark or what?”

      “Not much lark carting that beastly heavy stuff up the hill,” said Peter, indignantly.

      “Then why did you?” The Station Master’s voice was so much kinder now that Peter replied:—

      “You know that wet day? Well, Mother said we were too poor to have a fire. We always had fires when it was cold at our other house, and—”

      “DON’T!” interrupted Bobbie, in a whisper.

      “Well,” said the Station Master, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll look over it this once. But you remember, young gentleman, stealing is stealing, and what’s mine isn’t yours, whether you call it mining or whether you don’t. Run along home.”

      “Do you mean you aren’t going to do anything to us? Well, you are a brick,” said Peter, with enthusiasm.

      “You’re a dear,” said Bobbie.

      “You’re a darling,” said Phyllis.

      “That’s all right,” said the Station Master.

      And on this they parted.

      “Don’t speak to me,” said Peter, as the three went up the hill. “You’re spies and traitors—that’s what you are.”

      But the girls were too glad to have Peter between them, safe and free, and on the way to Three Chimneys and not to the Police Station, to mind much what he said.

      “We DID say it was us as much as you,” said Bobbie, gently.

      “Well—and it wasn’t.”

      “It would have come to the same thing in Courts with judges,” said Phyllis. “Don’t be snarky, Peter. It isn’t our fault your secrets are so jolly easy to find out.” She took his arm, and he let her.

      “There’s an awful lot of coal in the cellar, anyhow,” he went on.

      “Oh, don’t!” said Bobbie. “I don’t think we ought to be glad about THAT.”

      “I don’t know,” said Peter, plucking up a spirit. “I’m not at all sure, even now, that mining is a crime.”

      But the girls were quite sure. And they were also quite sure that he was quite sure, however little he cared to own it.

      Chapter III. The old gentleman

      After the adventure of Peter’s Coal-mine, it seemed well to the children to keep away from the station—but they did not, they could not, keep away from the railway. They had lived all their lives in a street where cabs and omnibuses rumbled by at all hours, and the carts of butchers and bakers and candlestick makers (I never saw a candlestick-maker’s cart; did you?) might occur at any moment. Here in the deep silence of the sleeping country the only things that went by were the trains. They seemed to be all that was left to link the children to the old life that had once been theirs. Straight down the hill in front of Three Chimneys the daily passage of their six feet began to mark a path across the crisp, short turf. They began to know the hours when certain trains passed, and they gave names to them. The 9.15 up was called the Green Dragon. The 10.7 down was the Worm of Wantley. The midnight town express, whose shrieking rush they sometimes woke from their dreams to hear, was the Fearsome Fly-by-night. Peter got up once, in chill starshine, and, peeping at it through his curtains, named it on the spot.

      It was by the Green Dragon that the old gentleman travelled. He was a very nice-looking old gentleman, and he looked as if he were nice, too, which is not at all the same thing. He had a fresh-coloured, clean-shaven face and white hair, and he wore rather odd-shaped collars and a top-hat that wasn’t exactly the same kind as other people’s. Of course the children didn’t see all this at first. In fact the first thing they noticed about the old gentleman was his hand.

      It was one morning as they sat on the fence waiting for the Green Dragon, which was three and a quarter minutes late by Peter’s Waterbury watch that he had had given him on his last birthday.

      “The Green Dragon’s going where Father is,” said Phyllis; “if it were a really real dragon, we could stop it and ask it to take our love to Father.”

      “Dragons don’t carry people’s love,” said Peter; “they’d be above it.”

      “Yes, they do, if you tame them thoroughly first. They fetch and carry like pet spaniels,” said Phyllis, “and feed out of your hand. I wonder why Father never writes to us.”

      “Mother says he’s been too busy,” said Bobbie; “but he’ll write soon, she says.”

      “I say,” Phyllis suggested, “let’s all wave to the Green Dragon as it goes by. If it’s a magic dragon, it’ll understand and take our loves to Father. And if it isn’t, three waves aren’t much. We shall never miss them.”

      So when the Green Dragon tore СКАЧАТЬ