could stand. I thought there were fairies there long after I ought
to have been a hard-headed young man of six, and if they've gone and
desecrated that wood with factories--"

The Squire smiled.

"I don't think I should worry. Amongst all your Unexpected Explosives
do you happen to condescend to have heard of the gentle horse-chestnut
and the school-children that collect them? Here are the two
delinquents I wrote to you about, and we've caught them in the act.
Just look at them wasting the precious things."

Two small boys were playing at conkers, two small boys with very
earnest faces and grubby clothes which never figured in KATE
GREENAWAY'S pictures, wasting precious material which five-and-thirty
other scholars were diligently collecting and stuffing into sacks. I
ought to have given them a lecture on patriotism--the army behind the
Army. But we each of us keep one childish passion untamed, even if we
are unromantic old bachelors, and I, His Majesty's Deputy Assistant
Acting Inspector for All Sorts of Unexpected Explosives and his very
loyal subject, who have lived for nearly half-a-century of Octobers in
London town--I borrowed the bigger conker and systematically and in
deadly earnest I fought and defeated the other small boy.

They say that treason never succeeds; so perhaps I can't be a traitor
after all.

* * * * *

THE UNDISMAYED.