Seventeen The quads had News. Not just stuff they had made up, but real NEWS. They scampered damply into the newspaper office all talking at once and falling over each other with corrections until the schoolmaster put up his hands and shouted, "Enough!" He sat them down on a bench and got them to take a couple of deep breaths before explaining what they had found. They had each received an "Explorer's outfit" for Christmas. This consisted of a small pair of toy binoculars, a water bottle on a strap and a compass. Suitably equipped, they had marched off in single file into the foothills behind the castle, singing as they went. They tried to copy songs they had heard the army sing but weren't sure of the proper lyrics; their vocabulary was good, but didn't encompass some of the fruitier idioms, so they filled in the bits they weren't sure of with words of a similar length. In some cases this actually made the songs even more dubious than the army's version but it gave them something to march to. This particular day they had ventured somewhat further than usual and had stumbled upon a strange-smelling, boggy patch of ground. They'd carefully picked their way through until they found a brook, steaming gently in the still afternoon air. It smelt terrible; like the day they'd broken a rotten egg at the back of the schoolroom and got everyone the afternoon off. They'd followed the course of the stream for a while, pushing and shoving to be the first in line, when one fell in and discovered that the water was warm! This was a huge discovery, only topped by the fact that around the next bend, in a grassy hollow, the stream widened to form a deepish pool of gently bubbling water. The quads stripped off their shoes and socks and played at the edge of the pool, watching the bubbles rise to the surface and pop into great expanding ripples. After a while, they reported, even the terrible smell didn't seem so bad. It was a great place to play. The schoolmaster agreed that it was definitely News; the discovery of a hot spring would be of interest to the whole town. He got the quads to draw him a map then set about writing a suitable piece for the mice to typeset ready for the next edition of the Vatch Tower. As it seemed only polite for the Prince Regent to hear the news first, once the mice were hard at work, the schoolmaster set off for the castle. When he heard the news, the Prince was ecstatic; the castle had always been awfully draughty and the thought of getting into a warm bed was thrilling. Very carefully, the schoolmaster explained that these hot springs consisted of water, not steel, and although a warmer bed wasn't on offer, a relaxing bubbly bath might be just what the doctor ordered. That was even better; anything that a doctor might approve of was immediately OK with the Prince and he scampered down the stairs calling for his car. The Prince and the schoolmaster drove for only a short way before the terrain became impossible for the soft suspension of the heavy convertible. It was Shank's pony (or a real one) from here on in, and that wasn't a game that the Prince was willing to play, not even for something as exciting as this. Disheartened, he asked to be taken back to the castle, where he buried himself in his latest project (making quilted draught excluders for every room) and sulked quietly. The schoolmaster went back into town and called the Chief Mouse Trainer. They had four days before the next issue of the paper; if the quads could only be kept quiet until then, they could really surprise everyone. There was just the problem of getting the Prince up to the spring; after all, he was a funny old stick but everyone thought well of him really