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“Although of course, you won’t be able to read it, since you don’t know the code. Just burn it.”
    Jeremy regarded her with a frown. “What do you mean, if anything happens to you?”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Caroline said. She thought of her father’s train falling into the gorge, and her mother’s dying, and having to leave the sheep station and come to England to live with a grandmother who didn’t like her. She shrugged fatalistically. “You can’t tell what’s going to happen, that’s all. I have to go.”
    Jeremy shoved his sketchbook and telescope back into his pack. “I’ll go with you as far as your garden.”
    The two of them went away downhill, leaving Holly How deserted and alone once more, to enjoy its wide view of the peaceful Land between the Lakes and the soft touch of the warm afternoon breeze on its rocky flank.

4

    Bosworth Badger Is Mystified

    But Holly How was not deserted, for a rather substantial stripy fellow had just emerged onto his porch, eager for a bit of fresh summer breeze to blow the cobwebs out of his mind. The porch was the front entrance to The Brockery Inn, one of the most highly regarded hostelries in the Land between the Lakes, and the stripy fellow was Bosworth Badger XVII, The Brockery’s proprietor. The name “Brockery,” of course, was derived from the Celtic word broc, for badger, and throughout the Lake District, badgers (who were thought to be rather disagreeable creatures) were known as “brocks.”
    Bosworth sat down in the rocking chair on his front porch, blinked several times against the bright sun, and lifted his face to sniff the pleasant, heather-scented breeze. Now, badgers are rather near-sighted, but even Bosworth could not fail to notice the two young persons sitting not far away, beside one of The Brockery’s many side entrances, one that had not been used for some time. The girl seemed to be writing something, whilst the boy was apparently drawing pictures.
    Bosworth was accustomed to the fell walkers who occasionally climbed Holly How, and to the village boys who played explorer amongst the rocky crags. And he was always on the lookout for the detestable badger diggers who might come to the sett with their dogs and badger tongs and potato sacks, aiming to catch an unwary badger. But whilst Bosworth recognized the young fellow as someone who visited Holly How from time to time, he had not seen the girl before, and he regarded her inquisitively.
    She was writing in a book. Bosworth was well acquainted with books, for he himself was an historian of some repute. Upon the death of his father, the Honorable Bosworth Badger XVI, he had assumed responsibility, not only for The Brockery Inn, but also for the official History of the Badgers of the Land between the Lakes and its companion project, the Holly How Badger Genealogy . The History and Genealogy were recorded in some two dozen leather-bound volumes in The Brockery’s library—quite the nicest room in the sett, Bosworth always felt, with its comfortable fire and leather armchairs and the carved oak table that served as his desk. In fact, he had spent the last hour there, recording the details of a kidnapping at the rock quarry at Hill Top Farm, from which a mother badger and her two young cubs had been recently taken by badger diggers. It was a tragic event and deserved to be recorded for future generations.
    Bosworth had never seen a young female person writing, and he was intrigued, especially when he saw that she was crying. He was a soft-hearted fellow who found it difficult to turn away from a creature in distress. Lodgers temporarily down on their luck—like the fox with the injured leg, and the family of rabbits whose burrow had been flooded—were permitted to stay at The Brockery even when they could not pay their bill. And although he recalled the Badger First Rule of Thumb (“Do not on any account approach a human, for they are not trustworthy”), Bosworth began to wonder