"There you are, David! What did I tell you? I knew I could do it... You didn't guess, did you, Penny? I bet I scared you!"

"I'll remember that, Jenny," Penny laughed. "One day I'll get my own back. Now what do I have to do?"

David produced an old tin and from it took a dirty piece of folded paper.

"These are the rules of the Lone Pine Club," he said. "We made them up the day we started the club and they're usually kept buried under the original lone pine tree at Witchend. Just read them, Penny, and then sign your name in your own blood under all the others... Peter's got a needle so that you can prick your arm or your finger."

"Your finger'll be best," Jenny said. "Then you can press it hard and it SPURTS out!"

Penny took the grubby scrap of paper and read the rules as well as she could.

"It's the last of all which is the important one," Peter said quietly. "The one on the other side. That's the only one that matters. It's the oath."

Penny turned the paper and read:

"Every member of the Lone Pine Club signed below swears to keep the rules and to be true to each other whatever happens always."

Then she glanced up and met Peter's blue eyes. The two girls looked at each other for a long minute without speaking. Then - "You're right, Peter," Penny said quietly. "Give me the needle. I'd like to sign this."

By the time she had done this they heard the sound of voices below them and ran across to see Dickie and Mary leading Jon up the hill.

Neither David nor Peter need have worried about Jon's interest, for even if he was acting he did it extremely well. When, like Penny, he had pricked his finger and signed the oath in his own blood, David took the paper back and said:

"If this is HQ Three then I suppose we ought to bury the documents here. What do you all think?"

They all agreed and so David produced his big knife, cut and lifted a slice of turf where they were standing and buried the sardine tin. When the turf was replaced they all looked at each other and smiled.

"This Club is nothing to laugh at, Jon and Penny," Mary said seriously. "And you've got something important to learn too... Acksherly we ought to have a new rule that nobody can really be a member until they know how to do the Peewit's whistle."

As they walked down the hill towards the town Tom gave the new members some lessons in whistling the call and they were still practising when, at the foot of the hill, they walked along the river bank until they came to the little stone bridge which carried the road from Clun into Wales.