They saw their prey in the garden; and he tried their patience by staying there for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Then he came briskly up the road to the common.

Their eyes began to shine with the expectation of immediate triumph, when, thirty yards from the common's edge, in a sudden access of caution, he bolted for covert and disappeared in the gorse sixty yards away on their left.
They fell noiselessly back, going as quickly as concealment permitted, to cut him off.

They were successful.

They caught him crossing an open space, yelled "Bang!" together; and in accordance with the rules of the game Wiggins fell to the ground.
They scalped him with yells of such a piercing triumph that the immemorial oaks for a quarter of a mile round emptied themselves hastily of the wood-pigeons feeding on their acorns.
Wiggins rose gloomily, gloomily took from his knickerbockers pocket his tattered and grimy notebook, gloomily made an entry in it, and gloomily said: "That makes you two games ahead." Then he spurned the earth and added: "I'm going to have a bicycle." The Twins looked at each other darkly; Erebus scowled, and a faint frown broke the ineffable serenity of the Terror's face.
"There'll be no living with Wiggins now, he'll be so cocky," said Erebus bitterly.
"Oh, no; he won't," said the Terror.

"But we ought to have bicycles, too.