Some boys would have let Noel know about the matches, but Oswald didn't. The heaps of carrots and turnips and parsnips and things were not very interesting when you knew that they were not bleeding warriors' or pilgrims' bones, and it was too cold to pretend for long with any comfort to the young Pretenders. So Oswald said-- "Let's go out on the Heath and play something warm. You can't warm yourself with matches, even if they're not your own." That was all he said. A great hero would not stoop to argue about matches. And Alice said, "All right," and she and Oswald went out and played pretending golf with some walking-sticks of Father's. But Noel and H.O. preferred to sit stuffily over the common-room fire. So that Oswald and Alice, as well as Dora and Dicky, who were being measured for boots, were entirely out of the rest of what happened, and the author can only imagine the events that now occurred. When Noel and H.O. had roasted their legs by the fire till they were so hot that their stockings quite hurt them, one of them must have said to the other--I never knew which: "Let's go and have another look at that cellar." The other--whoever it was--foolishly consented. So they went, and they took Oswald's dark-lantern in his absence and without his leave. They found a hitherto unnoticed door behind the other one, and Noel says he said, "We'd better not go in." H.O. says he said so too. But any way, they _did_ go in. They found themselves in a small vaulted place that we found out afterwards had been used for mushrooms. But it was long since any fair bud of a mushroom had blossomed in that dark retreat. The place had been cleaned and new shelves put up, and when Noel and H.O. saw what was on these shelves the author is sure they turned pale, though they say not. For what they saw was coils, and pots, and wires; and one of them said, in a voice that must have trembled-- "It is dynamite, I am certain of it; what shall we do?" I am certain the other said, "This is to blow up Father because he took part in the Lewisham Election, and his side won." The reply no doubt was, "There is no time for delay; we must act. We must cut the fuse--all the fuses; there are dozens." Oswald thinks it was not half bad business, those two kids--for Noel is little more than one, owing to his poetry and his bronchitis--standing in the abode of dynamite and not screeching, or running off to tell Miss Blake, or the servants, or any one--but just doing _the right thing_ without any fuss. [Illustration: WITH SCISSORS AND GAS PLIERS THEY CUT EVERY FUSE.] I need hardly say it did not prove to be the right thing--but they thought it was. And Oswald cannot think that you are really doing wrong if you really think you are doing right. I hope you will understand this. I believe the kids tried cutting the fuses with Dick's pocket-knife that was in the pocket of his other clothes. But the fuses would not--no matter how little you trembled when you touched them.