“I’ll go up the tree,” said I, “and beat, and you can pick them as they fall.”

Jem was, I fear, only too well accustomed to my arrogating the first place in our joint undertakings, and after giving me “a leg up” to an available bit of foothold, and handing up my stick, he waited patiently below to gather what I beat down.

The walnuts were few and far between, to say nothing of leaves between, which in walnut-trees are large.  The morning twilight was dim, my hands were cold and feebler than my resolution.  I had battered down a lot of leaves and twigs, and two or three walnuts; the sun had got up at last, but rather slowly, as if he found the morning chillier than he expected, and a few rays were darting here and there across the lane, when Jem gave a warning “Hush!” and I left off rustling in time to hear Mrs. Wood’s bedroom lattice opened, and to catch sight of something pushed out into the morning mists.

“Who’s there?” said the school-mistress.

Neither Jem nor I took upon us to inform her, and we were both seized with anxiety to know what was at the window.  He was too low down and I too much buried in foliage to see clearly.  Was it the rattle?  I took a hasty step downwards at the thought.  Or was it the blunderbuss?  In my sudden move I slipped on the dew-damped branch, and cracked a rotten one with my elbow, which made an appalling crash in the early stillness, and sent a walnut—­pop! on to Jem’s hat, who had already ducked to avoid the fire of the blunderbuss, and now fell on his face under the fullest conviction that he had been shot.

“Who’s there?” said the school-mistress, and (my tumble having brought me into a more exposed position) she added, “Is that you, Jack and Jem?”

“It’s me,” said I, ungrammatically but stoutly, hoping that Jem at any rate would slip off.

But he had recovered himself and his loyalty, and unhesitatingly announced, “No, it’s me,” and was picking the bits of grass off his cheeks and knees when I got down beside him.

“I’m sorry you came to take my walnuts like this,” said the voice from above.  She had a particularly clear one, and we could hear it quite well.  “I got a basketful on purpose for you yesterday afternoon.  If I let it down by a string, do you think you can take it?”

Happily she did not wait for a reply, as we could not have got a word out between us; but by and by the basketful of walnuts was pushed through the lattice and began to descend.  It came slowly and unsteadily, and we had abundant leisure to watch it, and also, as we looked up, to discover what it was that had so puzzled me in Mrs. Wood’s appearance—­that when I first discovered that it was a head and not a blunderbuss at the window I had not recognized it for hers.