Attached to the castle, but lying between it and the stepping-stones on the steep side of the hill, was an ancient enclosed orchard. It had doubtless been the original garden of the fortress, but the trees had gone back to their primitive "crabbiness" (as Hugh John put it), and in consequence the children were forbidden to eat any of the fruit--an order which might just as well not have been issued. But on a day it was reported to Janet Sheepshanks that Prissy and Hugh John were in the crab orchard. On tip-toe she stole down to catch them. She caught Hugh John. Prissy was up in one of the oldest and leafiest trees, and Hugh John, as in honour bound, persistently made signals in another direction to distract attention, as he was being hauled off to condign punishment. He had an hour to wait in the study for his father, who was away at the county town. During this time Hugh John suffered strange qualms, not of apprehension, which presently issued in yet keener and more definitely located agony. At last Mr. Picton Smith entered. "Well, sir, and what is this I hear?" he said severely, throwing down his riding-whip on the couch as if he meant to pick it up again soon. Hugh John was silent. He saw that his father knew all there was to know about his evil doings from Janet Sheepshanks, and he was far too wise to plead guilty. "Did I not tell you not to go to the orchard?" Hugh John hung his head, and made a slight grimace at the pattern on the carpet, as a severer pang than any that had gone before assailed him. "Now, look here, sir," said his father, shaking his finger at him in a solemnising manner, "If ever I catch you again in that orchard, I'll--I'll give you as sound a thrashing, sir, as ever you got in your life." Hugh John rubbed his hand across his body just above the second lowest button of his jacket. "Oh, father," he said plaintively, "I wish dreadfully that you had caught me before the last time I was in the orchard." The treatment with pills and rhubarb which followed considerably retarded the operations of the army of Windy Standard. It was not the first time that the stomach of a commander-in-chief has had an appreciable effect on the conduct of a campaign. CHAPTER XIII. THE ARMY OF WINDY STANDARD. At last, however, all was ready, in the historical phrase of Napoleon the Little, "to the last gaiter-button." It was the intention of the Commander-in-Chief to attack the citadel of the enemy with banners flying, and after due notice. He had been practising for days upon his three-key bugle in order to give the call of Childe Roland. But Private Sammy Carter, who was always sticking his oar in, put him upon wiser lines, and (what is more) did it so quietly and suggestively that General Napoleon was soon convinced that Sammy's plan was his own, and on the second day boasted of its merits to its original begetter, who did not even smile. The like has happened in greater armies with generals as distinguished.