Rose and Violet were up in the bungalow playing jackstones, while Margy and Mun Bun had gone for a walk with their mother.  So Russ and Laddie had the beach to themselves to play on.

Russ got inside the fort and crouched down in the hole he had dug.  Laddie took up his position not far away, a little distance down the beach, having with him a pile of paper wads that he was to throw at his brother.

“Are you ready?” asked Laddie.

“All ready!” answered Russ.  “Go ahead and fire!”

“Bang!  Bang!” shouted Laddie, making believe he was shooting off a gun.  The boys often played this game so they knew just how to do it.  “Bang!  Bang!”

Then Laddie began throwing large and small wads of paper at the sand fort behind which crouched Russ.  And Russ threw wads of paper at his smaller brother.

The sand walls of the fort kept Russ from being “shot” in the battle.  Laddie’s “bullets” and “cannon balls” hit the sand walls of the fort more often than they struck his brother and Russ only laughed at them, at the same time he was pelting Laddie.

“Oh, say! this is no fun,” complained the smaller boy after a bit.  “I’m getting hit all the while and you don’t get any at all.”

“I do so!  I got hit twice!”

“Well, that was when I threw cannon balls up in the air and they came down on your head like rain.”

“Well, you shoot me a few more times and then I’ll let you come into the fort,” agreed Russ.  “I’ll pull down the flag and surrender.  Go on, shoot me some more!”

So Laddie got together more paper “bullets” and “cannon balls” and threw them at his brother.  But hardly any of them hit Russ.  The fort was a good protection and with the flag floating from the top of the hill made a fine place for him to stay.

“This is the last time I’m going to shoot!” cried Laddie, and he took good aim with a large wad of paper which he called a “double cannon ball.”

He threw it at Russ and then, from some point back of the fort another “cannon ball” came sailing into it, flying off and hitting Laddie’s brother.

“Ouch!  Quit that!” cried Russ. “’Tisn’t fair throwing sand!  A lot of it went down my neck.”

“I didn’t throw sand!” said Laddie.

“Yes, you did, too!  That last cannon ball you threw had a lot of sand wrapped up in it.”

“No, I didn’t,” cried Laddie.

“Don’t you think I know!” shouted Russ, scrambling up out of the hole behind his fort.  “Can’t I feel it?”

Just then another paper “cannon ball” sailed into the fort from a sand hill back of it and it fell at the feet of Russ and burst, letting out a pile of sand.

“There!” cried Russ.  “What’d I tell you?”

“But I didn’t throw it!” said Laddie.  “You looked right at me and I didn’t throw it.”

“No, you didn’t,” admitted Russ.  “It came from in back of me.  I wonder who’s throwing sand cannon balls at us.”