to enter them of intent. Thus he taught his sisters and brother
a new version of the oldest probably of all pastimes, the game of
'Touch.' You had to touch 'across the leat,' and, with a little
good fortune, one of you went in. Once you were wet, it did not
so much matter though you got wetter.

An easy way of getting to the leat at the foot of the fields was
to walk there, but by the time he was eight Scott scorned the easy
ways. He invented parents who sternly forbade all approach to this
dangerous waterway; he turned them into enemies of his country and
of himself (he was now an admiral), and led parties of gallant tars
to the stream by ways hitherto unthought of. At foot of the avenue
was an oak tree which hung over the road, and thus by dropping from
this tree you got into open country. The tree was (at this time)
of an enormous size, with sufficient room to conceal a navy, and
the navy consisted mainly of the sisters and the young brother.
All had to be ready at any moment to leap from the tree and join
issue with the enemy on the leat. In the fields there was also a
mighty ocean, called by dull grown-ups 'the pond,' and here Scott's
battleship lay moored. It seems for some time to have been an English
vessel, but by and by he was impelled, as all boys are, to blow
something up, and he could think of nothing more splendid for his
purpose than the battleship. Thus did it become promptly a ship
of the enemy doing serious damage to the trade of those parts,
and the valiant Con took to walking about with lips pursed, brows
frowning as he cogitated how to remove the
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Terror of Devon. You may picture the sisters and brother trotting
by his side and looking anxiously into his set face. At last he
decided to blow the accursed thing up with gunpowder. His crew