“What subject?”

“Missiles, sir.  It appears that, when his blood is up, Mr. Badcock finds himself absolutely careless of missiles.  He declares that, with a sense of smell as acute as most men’s, he was unaware to-day of having been struck with a rotten egg until I, at ten paces’ distance, drew his attention to it.  Now, that is a degree of courage—­insensibility—­call it what you will—­to which I make no pretence.  The cut and thrust, gentlemen, the couched lance, even, within limits, the battering ram, would have, I feel confident, comparatively few terrors for me.  But missiles I abominate.  Drawing, as I am bound to do, my anticipations of the tented field from experience gathered—­I say it literally, gathered—­before the footlights, I confess to some sympathy with the gentleman who assured Harry Percy that but for these vile guns he would himself have been a soldier.  You will not misunderstand me.  I believe on my faith that as a military man I was born out of my time.  The scythed chariots of Boadicea, for instance, must have been damned inconvenient; yet I can conceive myself jumping ’em.  But a stone, as I learnt in my boyhood—­a stone, sirs, and a fortiori a bullet—­”

“Hist!” broke in my father, at the same moment reining up.  “Prosper, what do you make of that noise, up yonder?”

I listened.  “It sounds to me like a heavy cart—­”

“Or a waggon.  To my hearing there are two horses.”

“And runaway ones, by the shouting.”

We had reached a point of the road, not far from home, where a steep lane cut across it:  a track seldom used but scored with old ruts, sunk between hedges full sixteen feet high, leading down from a back gate of Constantine and a deserted lodge to a quay by the waterside.  Not once in three months, within my remembrance, did cart or waggon pass along this lane, which indeed grew a fine crop of grass and docks between the ruts.

“Nay,” said my father, after a few seconds, “I gave you a false alarm, gentlemen.  The shouting, whatever it means, is over.  Your pardon, Mr. Fett, that I interrupted you.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Fett, stepping put him to reconnoitre the lane, “I was but remarking what a number of the wise have observed before me, that a stone which has left the hand is in the hands of the dev—­”

He ducked his head with a cry as a stone whizzed past him and within a foot of it.  On the instant the loud rattle and thunder of cartwheels broke forth again, and now but a short distance up the lane; also a voice almost as loudly vociferating; and, almost before Mr. Fett could run back to us, a whole volley of stones flew hurtling across the road.

“Hi, there!  Halt!” My father struck spur and rode forward, in time to catch at and check the leader of two horses slithering downhill tandem-fashion before the weight of a heavy cart.  “Confound you, sir!  What the devil d’you mean by flinging stones in this manner across the middle of the King’s highway.”