Chapters

I. On the Garden Wall

II.  A Song

III.  Making An Opportunity

IV.  An Awkward Visit

V. A Lost Donkey

VI.  Rob

VII.  A Walnut Story

VIII.  The Bertrams’ Leap

IX.  Making His Leap

X. A Cripple

XI.  A Gift to the Queen

XII.  Letters

XIII.  Old Principle

XIV.  Heroes

XV.  An Unwelcome Proposal

XVI.  David and Jonathan

XVII.  Boy’s Big Opportunity

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Quite a Little Party of Friends to See Him Off

Old Principle Laughed at Dudley’s Notion

“Now Then, You Rascals, What Are You Doing to My Donkey?”

“He’s Dead, Ben—­He’s Dead!”

I

ON THE GARDEN WALL

They were sitting astride on the top of the old garden wall.  Below them on the one side stretched a sweet old-fashioned English garden lying in the blaze of an August sun.  In the distance, peeping from behind a wealth of creepers and ivy was the old stone house.  It was at an hour in the afternoon when everything seemed to be at a standstill:  two or three dogs lay on the soft green lawn fast asleep, an old gardener smoking his pipe and sitting on the edge of a wheelbarrow seemed following their example; and birds and insects only kept up a monotonous and drowsy dirge.

But the two little figures clad in white cricketting flannels, were full of life and motion as they kept up an eager and animated conversation on their lofty seat.

“You see, Dudley, if nothing happens, we will make it happen!”

“Then it isn’t an opportunity.”

“Yes it is.  Why if those old fellows in olden times hadn’t ridden off to look for adventures they would never have found them at home.”

“But an opportunity isn’t an adventure.”

“Yes, it is, you stupid!  An adventure is something that happens, and so is an opportunity.”

The little speaker who announced this logic so dogmatically, was a slim delicate boy with white face, and large brown eyes, and a crop of dark unruly curls that had a trick of defying the hair cutter’s skill, and of growing so erratically that “Master Roy’s head,” was pronounced quite unmanageable.

He was not a pretty boy, and was in delicate health, constantly subject to attacks of bronchitis and asthma, yet his spirit was undaunted, and as his old nurse often said, “his soul was too strong for his body.”

Dudley, his little cousin, who sat facing him, on the contrary, was a true specimen of a handsome English boy.  Chestnut hair and bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and an upright sturdy carriage, did much to commend him to every one’s favor:  yet for force of character and intellect he came far behind Roy.