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I'll explain it all to you a little later." At this moment they were held up by an armed guard of chuffs, stationed at the city limits. These saluted respectfully on seeing the Bishop's daughter, but examined Bleak's passport with care. Then the car passed on into the suburbs. As they neared the fields of actual battle, Bleak was able to see something of the embittered nature of the conflict.
The apples were all green, and too young to ferment, but the chuffs were ruthless once their passions were roused. They passed through the battle zone, and into a strip of country where pine woods flourished on a sandy soil. The fragrant breath of sun-warmed balsam came down about them, and Miss Chuff let out the motor as though to escape from the scene of carnage they had just witnessed.
The Henkyl Hunters were no "chuffs", no conundrums, with the strange riddle of incivility up a sleeve. "'Invite them to the picnic and don't forget the cocoa!" Tanpa laughed. "Just like them! We did promise to lay in a fresh supply of sundries, as we pass through the town to-night if there's still a store left open. And that reminds me, girlies, that it's getting late.
"These citizen chuffs and clowns will press in amongst us, when there is but an inch of a door open. And what remedy? Just e'en this, that as their cash gies them confidence, we should strip them of it. Flay them, my lord singe them as the kitchen wench does the rats, and then they winna long to come back again.
In the shelter of an old barn they heard a cork-popping machine-gun going off rapidly. This was one of the most atrocious ruses employed by the chuffs in their search for conscientious drinkers. The gun fires no projectile, but produces a pleasant detonation like the swift and repeated drawing of corks.
They flew low, and it was easy to read the initials C.P.H. painted on the nether surface of their wings. Then, as though at a concerted signal, they dropped a cloud of paper slips which came eddying down through the sunlight. The chuffs scrambled for them, wondering. A sullen murmur rose when the messages were read. They ran thus:
In the hot white sunlight of the summer morning platoons of Pan-Antis could be seen marching across the fields, going up from the rest centers to the firing line. In one place a shallow trench had been dug, from which the chuffs were firing upon a blackberry hedge at long range. One by one the unprincipled berries were being picked off by expert marksmen.
In the same moment, sundry other casements opened, and all the heads in the vicinity including the blacksmith Chuffs, and Mrs. Chuff's were thrust out to condole with their neighbour, Mrs. Peckaby. "Had she been and come back a'ready?" "Did she get tired of the saints so soon as this or did they get tired of her?" "What sort of a city, was it?" "Which was most plentiful geese or sage?"
In the confusion, amid the screams of the tortured inmates and the cruel cries of the invading chuffs, they made good their escape. Every one of the wretched inmates captured at the psychic carouse was immediately sentenced to six months' hard listening on the Chautauqua circuit.
The doctor, after a stay of twenty minutes, had buttoned up his great-coat again and pulled down his hat, and told Mrs. Chuff that there was no use in his remaining any longer, when, all of a sudden, a little rill of blood began to trickle from the lancet-cut in Tom Chuffs temple. "That's very odd," said the doctor. "Let us wait a little."
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