“Don’t venture!  White,” shouted Fred as loudly as he could shout, “don’t attempt it!  They only want to make game of you, and you’ll never get down if you manage to get up.  Take my advice now, don’t try.”

“Mind your own business,” and a large sod of earth was the reply.  The sod struck the boy on the face, and his nose bled profusely.

“There,” said young Riches, “what a cowardly trick!  Oh!  I think White the meanest spirited boy I ever saw.  He wouldn’t have flung that sod at you if you had been within arm’s length of him; well, I do dislike that White.”

“I’ll give it to him,” said Fred, as he vaulted over the fence, but immediately words, which Emilie had once repeated to him when they were talking about offensive and defensive warfare, came into his mind, and he stopped short.  Those words were:—­“If any man smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also,” and Fred was in the road again.

“Well,” said Riches, “we have done and said all we can, let us be going home, their disobeying orders is no excuse for us, so come along Parker—­won’t you?  They have a watch, and their blackberries won’t run away, I suppose.”

“Can’t we manage between us, though, to carry some of them?” said Fred.  “This large basket is not nearly full, let us empty one of them into it.  There, now we have only left them two.  I’ve got White’s load.  I’ve half a mind to set it down, but no I won’t though.  You will carry John’s, Won’t you, that’s lighter, and between them they may carry the other.”

They went on a few steps when they both turned to listen.  “I thought,” said Fred, “I heard my name called.  It could only be fancy, though.  Yet, hush!  There it is! quite plain,” and so it was.

John called to him loudly to stop, and at that moment such a scream was heard echoing through the woods, as sent the wood pigeons flying terrified about, and started the hares from their hiding places.  “Stop, oh stop, Fred, White can’t get down,” said John, breathless, “and I believe he will fall, if he hasn’t already, he says he is giddy.  Pray come back and see if you can’t help him, you are such a famous climber.”

Fred could not refuse, and in less than five minutes he was on the spot, but it was too late.  The branch had given way, and the boy lay at the foot of the tree senseless, to all appearance dead.  There was no blood, no outward sign of injury, but—­his face!  Fred did not forget for many years afterwards, its dreadful, terrified, ghastly expression.  What was to be done?  They were so horror-struck that for a few minutes they stood in perfect silence, so powerfully were they convinced that the lad had ceased to breathe, that they remained solemn and still as in the presence of death.

To all minds death has great solemnities; to the young, when it strikes one of their own age and number, especially.  “Come,” said Fred, turning to Riches, “come, we must not leave him here to die, poor fellow.  Take off his neck-handkerchief, Harcourt, and run you, Riches, to the stream close by, where we first sat down, and get some water.  Get it in your cap, man, you have nothing else to put it in.  Quick! quick!”