Hugh John had once been a member of the Comanche Cowboys, as Nipper Donnan's band was styled; but a disagreement about the objects of attack had hastened a rupture, and the affair of the castle was but the last act in a hostility long latent. In fact the war was always simmering, and was ready to boil over on the slightest provocation. For when Hugh John found that his father's orchards, his father's covers and hencoops were to be the chief prey (being safer than the farmers' yards, where there were big dogs always loose, and the town streets, where "bobbies" mostly congregated), he struck. He reflected that one day all these things would belong to himself. He would share with Prissy and Sir Toady Lion, of course; but still mainly they would belong to him. Why then plunder them now? The argument was utilitarian but sufficient. Though he did not mention the fact to Prissy or Sir Toady Lion, Hugh John was perfectly well acquainted with the leaders in the fray at the castle. He knew also that there were motives for the enmity of the Comanche Cowboys other and deeper than the town rights to the possession of the Castle of Windy Standard. It was night when Hugh John cautiously pushed up the sash of his window and looked out. A few stars were high up aloft wandering through the grey-blue fields of the summer night, as it were listlessly and with their hands in their pockets. A corn-crake cried in the meadow down below, steadily, remorselessly, like the aching of a tooth. A white owl passed the window with an almost noiseless whiff of fluffy feathers. Hugh John sniffed the cool pungent night smell of the dew on the near wet leaves and the distant mown grass. It always went to his head a little, and was the only thing which made him regret that he was to be a soldier. Whenever he smelt it, he wanted to be an explorer of far-off lands, or an honest poacher--even a gamekeeper might do, in case the other vocations proved unattainable. Hugh John got out of the window slowly, leaving Sir Toady Lion asleep and the door into Prissy's room wide open. He dropped easily and lightly upon the roof of the wash-house, and, steadying himself upon the tiles, he slid down till he heard Caesar, the black Newfoundland, stir in his kennel. Then he called him softly, so that he might not bark. He could not take him with him to-night, for though Caesar was little more than a puppy his step was like that of a cow, and when released he went blundering end on through the woods like a festive avalanche. Hugh John's father, for reasons of his own, persisted in calling him "The Potwalloping Elephant." So, having assured himself that Caesar would not bark, the boy dropped to the ground, taking the roof of the dog-kennel on the way. Caesar stirred, rolled himself round, and came out breathing hard, and thump-thumping Hugh John's legs with his thick tail, with distinctly audible blows.