"I aren't a-gooin unless you cooms too," he said doggedly. "What's the good of me, then?" scoffed Alf in his fierce and feverish way. "Can I climb the tree? Only wish I could. I'd show you. I suppose you'll be throwin that up at me next! My belief you're afraid." But Ernie was not to be moved from the position which he had taken up. Just now and then Alf had remarked that his brother for all his softness became hard--adamant indeed--in a way that rather frightened Alf. "I'll goo up the tree and shake em down to you," Ern said in his slow, musical voice. "You stand at the foot of her and gather em." "Fine!" jeered Alf. "And when Mr. Pigott comes out you'll be up the tree safe as dysies, and I'll be on the floor for him to paste!" "I thart you said he'd gone to Lewes," retorted Ern, unusually alert. "So he has," replied Alf sourly. "Only I suppose he won't stay there for ever, will he?" Ern, however, was proof against all the other's logic; and finally the two boys climbed the fence together. The walnut was a majestic tree, with boughs that dropped almost to the ground, making a splendid pavilion of green. Ern swarmed the tree. Alf stood at the foot, sheltered by the drooping branches. Thus he could watch the house, while nobody in the house could see anything of him but a pair of meagre black legs. He was fairly safe and knew it, but even so his heart pattered, he bit his nails continually, and kept a furtive eye on the line of his retreat. "Hurry!" he kept on calling. Ern, up aloft, went to work like a man. He tossed the branches to and fro. The ripe walnuts came rattling down. Alf, underneath, gathered rich harvest. He filled his pockets, his cap, his handkerchief. Opening his shirt, he stuffed the brown treasure into his bosom and grew into a portly urchin who rattled when he moved. "I got nigh a bushel!" he cried keenly. "Throw your coat down, and I'll fill the pockets!" The little devil darted to and fro, tumbling spiderlike upon the falling riches, absorbed in accumulation. His heart and eyes burned. There was money in this--money. And money was already taking its appointed place in Alf's philosophy. He would sell the nuts at so much a pound--some wholesale to a fruiterer he knew in the remote East End; some retail to his schoolfellows. The quality and quantity of the loot so absorbed him that he forgot his fears. And when he glanced up through the screen of thick branches to see a pair of grey-stockinged legs, thick and formidable to a degree, advancing upon the tree with dreadful deliberation, his heart stopped. The enemy was on them. Alf emptied handkerchief, pockets, cap: he emptied himself by a swift ducking motion that sent the treasure heaped against his heart pouring forth with a rattle about his neck and head and ears.