Mr. Quincunx nodded. “It may, for all I know, be a wild-goose chase. But I find your friend Gladys is up to her little tricks again--frightening people and upsetting their minds. And I promised Lacrima that you and I would stroll round that way--just to see that the girls don’t come to any harm. Only we mustn’t let them know we’re there. Lacrima would never forgive me if Gladys saw us.” “Do you mean to say that those two children are going to wander about these confounded damp woods of yours alone?” cried the American. “Look here, Mr. Dangelis, please understand this quite clearly. If you ever say a word to your precious Miss Gladys about this little scouting expedition, that’s an end of our talks, forever and a day!” The citizen of Ohio bowed with a mock heroic gesture, removing his hat as he did so. “I submit to your conditions, Don Quixote. I am entirely at your service. Is it the idea that we should track our friends on hands and knees? I am quite ready even for that, but I know what these woods of yours are like.” Mr. Quincunx vouchsafed no reply to this ill-timed jocosity. He was anxiously surveying the tall hedge upon their right hand. “Here’s the way,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Here’s the path. We can hit a short-cut here that brings us straight through Camel’s Cover, up to Wild Pine. Then we can slip down into Badger’s Bottom and so into the Auber Woods.” “But I thought the Auber Woods were much nearer than that. You told me the other day that you could get into the heart of them, in a quarter of an hour from your own garden!” “And so I can, my friend,” replied Mr. Quincunx, scrambling up the bank into the field, and turning to offer his hand to his companion. “But it happens that this is the way those girls are coming. At any rate that is what she said. They were going to avoid my lane but they were going to enter the woods from the Seven Ashes side, just because it is so much nearer.” “I submit, I submit,” muttered the artist blandly. “I only hope this scouting business needn’t commence till we have got well through Camel’s Cover and Badger’s Bottom! I must confess I am not altogether in love with the sound of those places, though no doubt they are harmless enough. But you people do certainly select the most extraordinary names for your localities. Our own little lapses in these things are classical compared with your Badgers and Camels and Ashes and Dead Men!”