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Napoleon was not finished with them Bran scolded himself He wouldn’t really have been Napoleon at all if one shot did him in The sun fell on Old Boney’s awful naked skull as his voice echoed through the elass streets of Port Ruby:

“Give him up, you stupid matchsticks! Donnez-moi mon frère du coeur! I’ll have my Brunty or I’ll have your heads! Hand over the book and I shall let you toddle back hoique!”

“Did you hear that?” Bran cried

“He ambushed the train, the rotter!” Emily said

“All this for that fat old Magazine Man?” Charlotte wondered

“I’d be very cross if I lost any of ood deal of sense to her

“We’ve got a right tragique for you, Boney! Coht down on top of the great book called Brunty as he primed his next shot

Napoleon shrugged “Is no et to explode things!” He raised up the rifles of his arms as if to part the Red Sea “Cos, lory!”

An ars leapt into the plaza froutter They twanged and bellowed and croaked htily They landed with crashes and clatters, for these bullfrogs ell-arhts In fact, as Branwell peered closer, he saw that they were auntlets, with no real fleshy frog inside, just like the rooster uns Each of them was as tall as Emily and as burly as the old blacksmith back home in Haworth They carried steel barrels on their broad backs, their fat ar with poleaxes and swords and cruel, spiked y crests blazing upon the arues and roared out the clanging tribal RIBBIT! RIBBIT! SNAPPANG! that was the song of their noble people

“Well!” said Charlotte, and shebrave, but she sis today She opened her ain

Just then, behind her lovely round head, the sun cae color wonderfully like sunrise, aCharlotte like a bonnet of lava

“Oh, Charlotte,” Anne breathed “Look!”

An iron boy rode into the red plaza on a gargantuan lion made all of blue water But he was not any sort of ordinary iron, nor any sort of ordinary boy, for thatsea-foa that they all knew right away he was there to save theh he could only have been a year or two older than Charlotte His features were carved in dark, finely forged and glea iron, but his hair was dusty, rusty red, his hat slick, oily green, his coat and buttons dark and glinting blue, his trousers and riding boots a brilliant violet, even his hands and his teeth shone with stripes of black cast-iron and sleek pyrite, the hundred thousand colors iron can becoh dirt and rain and is, which opened up at his back like the fiercest of all angels, e and scarlet and white-hot oozing feathers, iron poured fresh froreen seawater swirled and crashed and bubbled in the shape of a nificent lion, with a mane like a waterfall, a whiskered muzzle as blue as the North Sea, and a tail held aloft like a gushing fountain Whenever a globby burning feather fell froainst the lion’s skin, sending up great clouds of steam, so that a warm, mysterious mist announced their arrival anywhere th

ey went

“Who is that?” gasped Eeant Crashey, at the same moment