Pigeon Post. Arthur Ransome

      ON THE ROAD

      “They call me Hanging Johnny,

       Haul away, boys, Haul away.

      They say I hangs for money,

       So Hang, boys, Hang.

      And first I hangs me mother;

       Haul away, boys, Haul away.

      Me sister and me brother,

       So Hang, boys, Hang.

      And next I hangs me granny,

       Haul away, boys, Haul away.

      I hangs her up so canny,

       So Hang, boys, Hang.

      A rope, a beam and a ladder,

       Haul away, boys, Haul away.

      And I’ll hang you all togedder,

       So Hang, boys, Hang.”

      Then they tried “With one man, with two men, we mow the hay together,” but when they had got to “ninety men and a hundred men” they gave it up and went back to “Hanging Johnny.” They had gone through it for a second time, when Titty felt that the chorus was somehow fading away. Nancy had stopped singing, and John, and now Susan … She stopped singing herself. What was it they were looking at? Were those chimneys, and a roof, under the wood at the other side of the river?

CHAPTER VIII

      HIGH TOPPS

      “HERE we are,” said Nancy. “That’s Tyson’s.”

      A narrow lane turned to the right out of the road, crossed the almost dry bed of the river by a small hump-backed stone bridge, and ended in the cobbled yard of a whitewashed farmhouse. On one side of the yard was the house itself, with low windows and a porch with clematis climbing over it, a big cow-house with a barn above it, and an old pump with a shallow drinking-trough. On the other side was a wall of loose stones with a gate in it shutting in an orchard. Behind orchard and buildings a wood of oaks and birches and hazels, with here and there a pine, rose steeply up into the sky. Somewhere above the wood was High Topps, the workings of the old miners of long ago, and the precious metal they had come to find.

      The handcart rattled over the bridge and across the hard cobbles of the yard. The dromedaries followed more quietly, though Roger felt it was only right that the journey should end on the run, and that the leading donkey should announce the arrival of the caravan with a loud triumphant bray.

      Mrs Tyson came out of the porch just as Nancy was leaning her dromedary up against the orchard wall. Her arms were white to the elbows with flour, for she was busy baking, and she did not seem too pleased to find the farmyard full of prospectors with their handcart and their laden dromedaries.

      “And here you are,” she said. “And where’s Mrs Blackett? Goodness there’s a lot of you. There was only three yesterday. I don’t know where we’re going to put you all.”

      “Mother’s coming along.”

      “You’ll have told her what I said about fires,” said Mrs Tyson. “And about there being no water up in the wood, with the beck run dry.”

      “We told her everything,” said Nancy. “It’s all right. It’s no good lighting fires where there isn’t any water. And we’re not going to unpack tents or anything till mother’s been. Oh, hullo, Robin …” A young man came out from behind the barn with a long pole and a bundle of brushwood at the top of it. He set it to lean against the wall of the barn with half a dozen others.

      “That’s Robin Tyson, Mrs Tyson’s son,” Peggy explained to Dorothea.

      “More fire-brooms,” said Roger.

      “We’ll likely need ’em,” said Robin.

      “Have you joined Colonel Jolys’ volunteers?” asked Nancy.

      “No good to us,” said Mrs Tyson. “However can we let them know if there’s a fire? If owt catches here, we mun fight it ourselves. Before we’d get the word to the Colonel at head of the lake there’d be nowt left of our valley but ash and smoke.”

      “If there’s a fire we’ll all help,” said Nancy.

      “So long as you don’t light it I’ll be well pleased,” said Mrs Tyson.

      “We won’t do that,” said Roger indignantly.

      “If I could be sure,” said Mrs Tyson. She looked up at the blue sky over the high wood behind the farm. “Never a sign of rain,” she said. “And it’s weeks now the ground is cracking for it. Oh well,” she said, “I’ve my baking to do whatever … and Mrs Blackett coming.”

      “She won’t be here just yet,” said Nancy. “At least I shouldn’t think so … not until the painters and paperers have gone. May we just leave our things here while we go up the wood to have a look at the Topps?”

      “There’s no carts stirring today,” said Mrs Tyson. “Your things’ll be out of the road again yon barn wall.”

      “You’ll want the pigeons out of the sun,” said Robin Tyson. “Best wheel them into the barn.”

      “Thank you very much,” said Titty, who had been trying to make a shady place for the pigeons by draping a bit of a ground-sheet over their cage.

      “Dump everything,” cried Nancy. “Travel light. It’s a bit of a pull to the top.”

      The handcart was run into the barn, with the pigeons’ cage upon it. Dromedaries leaned against the orchard wall. Knapsacks were slung off and piled in a heap.

      “No need to carry anything,” said Peggy. “Just a dash up the wood to have a squint at the goldfields.”

      “Compass,” said John, digging one out of the outer pocket of his knapsack.

      “And we’d better have the telescope,” said Titty.

      “We might jolly well want it,” said Nancy. Already she was leaving the farmyard, and opening the gate into the wood.

      The others crowded through.

      “Shut the gate, some one,” said Nancy.

      “Aye, aye, Sir,” said Roger.

      It was pleasant to come into the shade of the woods after the long trek in blazing sunshine along the valley road. There seemed to be less dust in the air, and there was a clean smell of resin from the scattered pines, with their tall rough-scaled trunks, that towered among the short bushy hazels, the rowans, and the little oaks. A track wound upwards through the trees. Anybody could have told that it was very little used. Here and there were stony patches in it, where dried moss covered the stones. Here and there were little drifts of last year’s leaves. Here and there under and near the big pine trees the path was soft and brown with fallen pine needles. The track was not wide enough for a cart, and probably it had been used only by sleds bringing bracken from the fells above.

      “Is it wide enough for the handcart?” Peggy asked Susan. “There won’t be much room to spare.”

      “We won’t be taking it up there,” said Susan.

      “Unless it rains and the beck fills,” said Nancy over her shoulder.

      “Where is the beck?” said Titty, remembering the pleasant little stream up which she and Roger had explored together last summer when they had discovered Swallowdale and the cave they had called after Peter Duck. But in this wood there was no tinkling of falling water.

      “Just crossing it,” said John, and a moment later a strip of shingle across the path