"It wasn't much of a room. No carpet or lino and only one small iron bed, a chair, and a bare sort of chest. The chap with a squint and his mate had to fetch another fellow before they could get us up the stairs, but in the end they shoved us in and locked the door. It was Jon's idea to signal and he did it by moving his coat up and down in front of the light."

"What did you signal, Jon?" Penny asked suddenly.

"Sometimes I did SOS and then our names. It was too difficult to do long words or sentences. It was something to do, although we didn't see how you girls could reach us."

"Oh, didn't you?" Penny protested. "And who did reach you, we'd like to know? You just wait till you hear what we did after waiting for hours and freezing almost to death up at those ghastly ruins."

They calmed her down and Tom continued.

"There's not much more to say, I don't reckon. After Jon had been signalling for a bit we saw the fire come over the top of the hill and then Alan and the rest of them dashing down on the horses. It was better than the television... When all the excitement started outside, and everybody was dashing about we tried to get the door open but couldn't manage it. Then we saw you girls prancing about down there and remembered the dog, so I bashed the window and I reckon that's all."

"Oh you do, do you?" said Dickie, breaking the hush that followed. "You reckon that's all? You've quite forgotten who came and rescued you, I s'pose? You don't know who found a policeman while the flames of that prairie fire were lickin' the very gates and led him right through the enemy's camp till we found you there and busted open the door and rescued you... You reckon that's all, do you?"

Poor Tom was taken aback by this attack and was thankful to Jon who said, "You go too fast, Dickie. I was just going to thank you and Mary publicly, now, in the name of the three of us... Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Mary."

The twins inclined their heads in recognition of this tribute and then begged Mr Cantor to tell his story but he said again that he wanted to hear all that they had to say first.

"Let me tie up the threads at the end," he said.

David yawned behind his hand.

"I want to know how the girls popped up out of that tunnel, and I seem to remember hearing that Jenny had an adventure we know nothing about..."

So Penny began the girls' story...

"And, you see," she finished, "we didn't do much really and it was luck that we found the tunnel under the walls...