and we fled in disorder for a mile. After which Roots suddenly shot at
a pheasant in the high road by Chiselstead, and then young Barker told
lies about the severity of the game laws and made Roots sore afraid, and
we hid the pistol in a dry ditch outside the school field. A day or so
after we got in again, and ignoring a certain fouling and rusting of the
barrel, tried for a rabbit at three hundred yards. Young Roots blew
a molehill at twenty paces into a dust cloud, burnt his fingers, and
scorched his face; and the weapon having once displayed this strange
disposition to flame back upon the shooter, was not subsequently fired.

One main source of excitement for us was "cheeking" people in vans and
carts upon the Goudhurst road; and getting myself into a monstrous white
mess in the chalk pits beyond the village, and catching yellow jaundice
as a sequel to bathing stark naked with three other Adamites, old Ewart
leading that function, in the rivulet across Hickson's meadows, are
among my memorabilia. Those free imaginative afternoons! how much they
were for us! how much they did for us! All streams came from the then
undiscovered "sources of the Nile" in those days, all thickets were
Indian jungles, and our best game, I say it with pride, I invented. I
got it out of the Bladesover saloon. We found a wood where "Trespassing"
was forbidden, and did the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand" through it from
end to end, cutting our way bravely through a host of nettle beds that
barred our path, and not forgetting to weep and kneel when at last we
emerged within sight of the High Road Sea. So we have burst at times,
weeping and rejoicing, upon startled wayfarers. Usually I took the part
of that distinguished general Xenophen--and please note the quantity of
the o. I have all my classical names like that,--Socrates rhymes with
Bates for me, and except when the bleak eye of some scholar warns me of
his standards of judgment, I use those dear old mispronunciations still.
The little splash into Latin made during my days as a chemist washed off