As they arranged the prints between the leaves of the History Elfrida’s eye was caught by the words “moat” and “water-supply,” and she read on and turned the page.

“Don’t stop to read,” said Edred, but she waved him away.

“I say, listen,” she said, turning back; and she read—

“‘In ancient times Arden Castle was surrounded by a moat. The original architects of the venerable pile, with that ingenuity whose fruits the thinking world so much admires in the lasting monuments of their labours, diverted from its subterraneous course a stream which rose through the chalk in the hills of the vicinity, and is said to debouch into the sea about fifty yards below high-water mark. The engineering works necessary for this triumph of mind over matter endured till 1647, when the castle was besieged by the troops of that monster in human form Oliver Cromwell. To facilitate his attack on the castle the officer in command gave orders that the stream should be diverted once more into its original channel. This order was accordingly executed by his myrmidons, and the moat was left dry, this assisting materially the treacherous designs of the detestable regicides. It is rumoured that the stream, despite the lapse of centuries, still maintains its subterranean course; but the present author, on visiting, during the autumn of 1821, the residence of the present Earl of Arden, and by his permission, most courteously granted, exploring the site thoroughly, was unable to find any trace of its existence. The rural denizens of the district denied any knowledge of such a stream, but they are sunk in ignorance and superstition, and have no admiration for the works of philosophy or the awe-inspiring beauties of Nature.’”

“What a dull chap he is!” said Edred. “But, I say, when was it printed—1822? . . . I believe I know why the rural What’s-his-names wouldn’t let on about the stream. Don’t you see, it’s the stream that runs through the smugglers’ cave? and they were smuggling then for all they were worth.”

“That’s clever of you,” said Elfrida.

“Well, I bet we find traces of its existence, when we’ve found the treasure. Come on; let’s try the chests again. We’ll put on the first things we find, and chance it, this time. There’s nothing to stop us. We haven’t quarrelled or anything.”

They had not quarrelled, but there was something to stop them, all the same. And that something was the fact that they could not find The Door. It simply was not there.

“And we haven’t quarrelled or anything,” said Elfrida, despairing when they had searched the East House again and again, and found no door that would consent to lead them to the wonderful attic where the chests stood in their two wonderful rows. She sat down on the top step of the attic stairs, quite regardless of the dust that lay there thick.

“It’s all up—I can see that,” said Edred. “We’ve muffed it somehow. I wonder whether we oughtn’t to have taken those photographs.”

“Do you think perhaps . . . could we have dreamed it all?”

“No,” said Edred, “there are the prints—at least, I suppose they’re there. We’ll go down and see.”

Miserably doubting, they went down and saw that the photographs were where they had put them, in between the pages of the “History of Arden.”

“I don’t see what we can do. Do you?” said Edred forlornly. It was a miserable ending to the happenings that had succeeded each other in such a lively procession ever since they had been at Arden. It seemed as though a door had been shut in their faces, and “Not any more,” written in very plain letters across the chapter of their adventures.

“I wish we could find the witch again,” said Elfrida; “but she said she couldn’t come into these times more than once.”

“I wonder why,” said Edred, kicking his boots miserably against the leg of the table on which he sat. “That Dicky chap must have been here pretty often, to have an address at New Cross. I say, suppose we wrote to him. It would be something to do.”

So they wrote. At least Elfrida did, and they both signed it. This was the letter:—

“Dear Cousin Richard,—You remember meeting us at the Gunpowder Plot. If you are at these modern times again we should like to know you and to know how you get into the future. Perhaps we could get into the past the same way, because the way we used to get we can’t any more.

“Perhaps you could come here next time instead of New Cross.

“Your affectionate friends at a distance, (Miss) Elfrida Arden, (Lord) Edred Arden.

“PS.—I don’t know how lords sign letters because I have not been it long, but you’ll know who it is.

“PSS.—Remember old Parrot-nose.”

They walked down to the post with this, and as they went they remembered how they had gone to the “George” with old Lady Arden’s letter in Boney’s time; and Edred remarked, listlessly, that it would be rather fun to find the smugglers’ cave. So when they had bought a stamp and licked it and put it on the letter they went up on the cliff and looked among the furze-bushes for the entrance to the smugglers’ cave. But they did not find it. Nothing makes you hotter than looking for things that you can’t find—and there is no hotter place to look for things than a furze forest on the downs on a sunny summer afternoon. The children were glad to sit down on a clean, smooth, grassy space and look out at the faint blue line of the sea.

They had not really enjoyed looking for the smugglers’ cave. Vain regrets were busy in each breast. Edred gave voice to them when he said—

“Oh, if only we had put those gold clothes on when we had the chance!”

And Elfrida echoed the useless heartfelt wail with, “Oh, if we only had!”

And then they sat in silence and looked at the sea for quite a long time.

Now, if you sit perfectly silent for a long time and look at the sea, or the sky, or the running water of a river, something happens to you—a sort of magic. Not the violent magic that makes the kind of adventures that I have been telling you about, but a kind of gentle but very strong inside magic, that makes things clear, and shows you what things are important, and what are not. You try it next time you are in a very bad temper, or when you think some one has been very unjust to you, or when you are very disappointed and hurt about anything.

The magic worked in Edred and Elfrida till Edred said—

“After all, we’ve got the castle;” and Elfrida said—

“And we have had some ripping times.”

And then they looked at the sea in more silence, during which Hope came and whispered to Elfrida, who instantly said—

“The Mouldiwarp! Perhaps it’s not all over. It told us to find the door. And we did find the door. Perhaps it would tell us something new if we called it now—and if it came.”

“And if it came,” said Edred.

“Don’t talk—make poetry,” said Elfrida. But that was one of the things that Edred never could do. Trying to make poetry was, to him, like trying to remember a name you have never heard, or to multiply a number that you’ve forgotten by another number that you don’t recollect.

But Elfrida, that youthful poet, frowned and bit her lips and twisted her hands, and reached out in her mind to words that she just couldn’t quite think of, till the words grew tame and flew within reach, and she caught them and caged them behind the bars of rhyme. This was her poem—

“So you be always,” said the white Mouldiwarp, suddenly appearing between them on the yellowy dry grass. “Well, well! Youth’s the season for silliness. What’s to do now? I be turble tired of all this. I wish I’d only got to give ye the treasure and go my ways. You don’t give a poor Mouldiwarp a minute’s rest. You do terrify me same’s flies, you do.”

“Is there any other way,” said Elfrida, “to get back into the past? We can’t find the door now.”

“Course you can’t,” said the mole. “That’s a chance gone, and gone for ever.

Well, tell me where you want to go, and I’ll make you a backways-working white clock.”

“Anywhere you like,” said Edred incautiously.

“Tch, tch!” said the mole, rubbing its nose with vexation. “There’s another chance gone, and gone for ever. You be terrible spending with your chances, you be. Now, answer sharp as weasel’s nose. Be there any one in the past you’d like to see?

And that’s poetry as good as yours any day of the week.”

“Cousin Richard,” said Elfrida and Edred together. This was the only name they could think of.

“Bide ye still, my dears,” said the Mouldiwarp, “and I’ll make you a white road right to where he is.”

So they sat still, all but their tongues.

“Is he in the past?” said Elfrida; “because if he is, it wasn’t much good our writing to him.”

“You hold your little tongues,” said the Mouldiwarp, “and keep your little mouths shut, and your little eyes open, and wish well to the white magic. There never was a magic yet,” the mole went on, “that was the worse for being well-wished.”

“May I say something,” said Elfrida, “without its stopping the magic?”

“Put your white handkerchief over your face and talk through it, and then you may.”

By a most fortunate and unusual chance, Elfrida’s handkerchief was white: it was, in fact, still folded in the sixteen blameless squares into which the laundress had ironed it. She threw it over her face as she lay back on the turf and spoke through it.

“I’d like to see the nurse witch again,” she said.

“Instead of Cousin Richard?”

“No: as well as.”

“That’s right,” said the magic mole. “You shouldn’t change your wishes; but there’s no rule against enlarging them—on the contrary. Now look!”

Elfrida whisked away the handkerchief and looked.

Have you ever noticed the way the bath water runs away when you pull up the bath tap? Have you ever seen bottles filled through a funnel?

The white Mouldiwarp reached up its hands—its front feet I ought perhaps to say—towards the deep-blue sky, where white clouds herded together like giant sheep.

And it spoke. At least, it did not speak, but it sang. Yet I don’t know that you could call it singing either. It was more like the first notes that a violin yields to the bow wielded by the hand of a master musician. And the white clouds stooped to answer it. Round and round in the blue sky they circled, drawing together and swirling down, as the bath water draws and swirls when you pull up the knob labelled “Waste”—round and round till they showed like a vast white funnel whose neck hung, a great ring, above the group on the dry grass of the downs. It stooped and stooped. The ring fitted down over them, they were in a white tower, narrow at its base where that base touched the grass, but widening to the blue sky overhead.

“Take hands,” cried the Mouldiwarp. “Always hold hands when there is magic about.”

The children clasped hands.

“Both hands,” said the Mouldiwarp; and each child reached out a hand, that was caught and held. Round and round, incredibly swifter and swifter, went the cloud funnel, and the voice of the mole at their feet sounded faint and far away.

“Up!” it cried, “up! Shall the very clouds dance for your delight, and you alone refrain and tread not a measure?”

The children leaped up—and through the cloud came something that was certainly music, though it was so vague and far away that the sharpest music-master you ever had could not have made out the tune. But the rhythm of it was there, an insistent beat, beat, beat—and a beat that made your feet long to keep time to it. And through the rhythm presently the tune pierced, as the sound of the pipes pierces the sound of the drums when you see the Church Brigade boys go by when you are on your holiday by the sea near their white-tented, happy camps. And that time the children’s feet could not resist. They danced steps that they had not known they knew. And they knew, for the first time, the delight of real dancing: none of your waltzes, or even minuets, but the dancing that means youth and gaiety, and being out for a holiday, and determined to enjoy everything to the last breath.

And as they danced the white cloud funnel came down and closed about them, so that they danced, as it were, in a wrapping of white cotton-wool too soft for them even to feel it. And there was a sweet scent in the air. They did not know in that cloudy, soft whiteness, what flower bore that scent, but they knew that it smelt of the spring, and of fields and hedges far away from the ugliness of towns. The cloud thinned as the scent thickened, and green lights showed through it.

The green lights grew, the cloud funnel lifted. And Edred and Elfrida, still dancing, found themselves but two in a ring of some thirty children, dancing on a carpet of green turf between walls of green branches. And every child wore a wreath of white May-blossoms on its head. And that was the magic scene that had come to them through the white cloud of the white Mouldiwarp’s magic.

“What is it? Why are we dancing?” Edred incautiously asked of the little girl whose hand—and not Elfrida’s—he found that his left hand was holding. The child laughed—just laughed, she did not answer. It was Elfrida who had his right hand, and her own right hand was clasped in that of a boy dressed in green.

“Oh!” she said, with a note of glad recognition. “It’s you! I’m so glad! What is it? Why are we dancing?”

“It’s May-day,” said Cousin Richard, “and the King is coming to look on at the revels.”

“What king?” she asked.

“Who but King Harry?” he said. “King Harry and his new Queen, that but of late was the Lady Anna Boleyn.”

“I say, Dick,” said Edred across his sister, “I am jolly glad to see you again. We——”

“Not now,” said Dick earnestly; “not a word now. It is not safe. And besides—here comes the King!”

CHAPTER XIII
MAY-BLOSSOM AND PEARLS

The King came slowly on a great black horse, riding between the green trees. He himself wore white and green like the May-bushes, and so did the gracious lady who rode beside him on a white horse, whose long tail almost swept the ground and whose long mane fluttered in the breeze like a tattered banner.

The lady had a fine face—proud and smiling—and as her brave eyes met the King’s even the children could see that, for the time at least, she and the King were all the world to each other. They saw that in the brief moment when, in the whirl of the ringed dance, their eyes were turned the way by which the King came with his Queen.

“I wish I didn’t know so much history,” gasped Elfrida through the quick music. “It’s dreadful to know that her head——” She broke off in obedience to an imperative twitch of Richard’s hand on hers.

“Don’t!” he said. “I have not to think. And I’ve heard that history’s all lies. Perhaps they’ll always be happy like they are now. The only way to enjoy the past is not to think of the future—the past’s future, I mean—and I’ve got something else to say to you presently,” he added rather sternly.

The ring broke up into an elaborate figure. The children found themselves fingering the coloured ribbons that hung from the Maypole that was the centre of their dance, twining, intertwining, handing on the streamers to other small, competent fingers. In and out, in and out—a most complicated dance. It was pleasant to find that one’s feet knew it, though one’s brain could not have foreseen, any more than it could have remembered, how the figures went. There were two rings round the Maypole—the inner ring, where Edred and Elfrida were, of noble children in very fine clothes, and the outer ring, of village children in clothes less fine but quite as pretty. Music from a band of musicians on a raised platform decked with May-boughs and swinging cowslip balls inspired the dancers. The King and Queen had reined up their horses and watched the play, well pleased.

And suddenly the dance ended and the children, formed into line, were saluting the royal onlookers.

“A fair dance and footed right featly,” said the King in a great, jolly voice. “Now get you wind, my merry men all, and give us a song for the honour of the May Queen and of my dear lady here.”

There was whispering and discussion. Then Richard Arden stepped out in front of the group of green-clad noble children.

“With a willing heart, my liege,” he said, “but first a song of the King’s good Majesty.”

And with that all the children began to sing—

It is a rousing tune, and it was only afterwards that Edred and Elfrida were surprised to find that they knew it quite well.

But even while they were singing Elfrida was turning over in her mind the old question, Could anything they did have any effect on the past? It seemed impossible that it should not be so. If one could get a word alone with that happy, stately lady on the white horse, if one could warn her, could help somehow! The thought of the bare scaffold and the black block came to Elfrida so strongly that she almost thought she saw them darkling among the swayed, sun-dappled leaves of the greenwood.

Somebody was pulling at her green skirt. An old woman in a cap that fitted tightly and hid all her hair—an old woman who was saying, “Go to her! go!” and pushing her forward. Some one else put a big bunch of wild flowers into her hand, and this person also pushed her forward. And forward she had to go, quite alone, the nosegay in her hand, across the open space of greensward under the eyes of several hundreds of people, all in their best clothes and all watching her.

She went on till she came to the spot where the King and Queen were, and then she paused and dropped two curtsies, one to each of them. Then, quite without meaning to do it, she found herself saying—

And when she had said that she made two more nice little curtsies and handed up the flowers to the Queen.

“If we had known your Majesties’ purpose,” said a tall, narrow-faced man in a long gown, “your Majesties had had another than this rustic welcome.”

“Our purpose,” said the King, “was to surprise you. The Earl of Arden, you say, is hence?”

“His son and daughter are here to do homage to your Highness,” said the gowned man, and then Elfrida saw that Edred was beside her.

“Hither, lad,” said the King, and reaching down a hand caught Edred’s. “Your foot on mine,” said his Majesty. “So!” and he swung Edred up on to the saddle in front of him. Elfrida drew nearer to the white horse as the Queen beckoned her, and the Queen stooped low over her saddle to ask her name. Now was the moment that Elfrida had wished for, now was the chance, if ever, to warn the Queen.

“Elfrida Arden’s my name,” she said. “Your Majesty, may I say something?”

“Say on,” said the Queen, raising fine eyebrows, but smiling too.

“I should like to come quite close and whisper,” said Elfrida stoutly.

“Thou’rt a bold lass,” said the Queen, but she stooped still lower.

“I want to warn you,” said Elfrida, quickly whispering, “and don’t not pay attention because I’m only a little girl. I know. You may think I don’t know, but I do. I want to warn you——”

“Already once, this morning I have been warned,” said the Queen. “What croaking voices for May-day!”

“Who warned you, your Majesty?”

“An old hag who came to my chamber in spite of my maids, said she had a May charm to keep my looks and my lord’s love.”

“What was the charm?” Elfrida asked eagerly, forgetting to say “Majesty” again.

“It was quite simple,” said the Queen. “I was to keep my looks and my love so long as I never dropped a kerchief. But if I dropped a kerchief I should lose more than my looks and my love; she said I should lose my head,”—the Queen laughed low,—“within certain days from the dropping of that kerchief—this head you see here;” she laughed again.

“Don’t, oh, don’t!” said Elfrida. “Nineteen days, that’s the warning—I do hope it’ll do some good. I do like you, dear Queen. You are so strong and splendid. I would like to be like you when I grow up.”

The Queen’s fine face looked troubled.

“Please Heaven, thou’lt be better than I,” she said, stooping lower still from her horse; Elfrida standing on tip-toe, she kissed her.

“Oh, do be careful,” said Elfrida. “Your darling head!” and the Queen kissed her again.

Then a noise rather like bagpipes rose shrill and sudden, and all drew back, making room for the rustic maids and swains to tread the country dance. Other instruments joined in, and suddenly the King cried, “A merry tune that calls to the feet. Come, my sweeting, shall we tread a measure with the rest?” So down they came from their horses, King and Queen, and led the country dance, laughing and gay as any country lad and lass.

Elfrida could have cried. It seemed such a pity that everybody should not always be good and happy, as everybody looked to-day.

The King had sprung from his horse with Edred in his arms, and now he and his sister drew back towards Cousin Richard.

“How pretty it all is!” said Edred. “I should like to stay here for ever.”

“If I were you,” said Richard, very disagreeably indeed, “I would not stay here an hour.”

“Why? Is it dangerous? Will they cut our heads off?”

“Not that I know of,” said Cousin Richard, still thoroughly disagreeable. “I wasn’t thinking about your heads. There are more important things than your heads in the world, I should think.”

“Not so very much more,” said Elfrida meekly,—“to us, I mean. And what are you so cross about?”

“I should have thought,” Richard was beginning, when the old woman who told Elfrida to go forward with the nosegay of ceremony sidled up to them.

“Into the woods, my children,” she whispered quickly,—“into the woods. In a moment the Queen will burst into tears, and the King will have scant kindness for those whose warnings have set his Queen to weeping.”

They backed into the bushes, and the green leaves closed behind the four.

“Quick!” said the witch; “this way.” They followed her through the wood under oaks and yew-trees, pressing through hazels and chestnuts to a path.

“Now run!” she said, and herself led the way nimbly enough for one of her great age. Their run brought them to a thinning of the wood—then out of it—on to the downs, whence they could see Arden Castle and its moat, and the sea.

“Now,” the old woman said, “mark well the spot where the moat stream rises. It is there that the smugglers’ cave was, when Betty Lovell foretold the landing of the French.”

“Why,” said Edred and Elfrida, “you’re the witch again! You’re Betty Lovell!”

“Who else?” said the old woman. “Now, call on the Mouldiwarp and hasten back to your own time. For the King will raise the country against the child who has made his sweeting to shed tears. And she will tell him, she keeps nothing from him, and . . . yet——”

“She won’t tell him about the kerchief?”

“She will, and when she drops it on that other May-day at Greenwich he will remember. Come, call your Mouldiwarp and haste away.”

“But we’ve only just come,” said Edred, “and what’s Elfrida been up to?”

“Oh, bother!” said Elfrida. “I want to know what Richard meant about our heads not being important.”

“Your heads will be most important if you wait here much longer!” said the witch sharply. “Come, shall I call the Mouldiwarp, or will you?”

“You do,” said Elfrida. “I say, Dicky, what did you mean? Do tell us—there’s a dear.”

Betty Lovell was tearing up the short turf in patches, and pulling the lumps of chalk from under it.

“Help me,” she cried, “or I shan’t be in time!” So they all helped.

“Couldn’t Dick go with us—if we have to go?” said Elfrida suddenly.

“No,” said Richard, “I’m not going to—so there!”

“Why?” Elfrida gasped, tugging at a great piece of chalk.

“Because I shan’t.”

“Then tell us what you meant before the Mouldiwarp comes.”

“You can’t,” said a little voice, “because it’s come now.”

Every one sat back on its heels, and watched where out of the earth the white Mouldiwarp was squeezing itself between two blocks of chalk, into the sunlight.

“Why, I hadn’t said any poetry,” said Elfrida.

“I hadn’t made the triangle and the arch,” said old Betty Lovell. “Well, if ever I did!”

“I’ve been here,” said the mole, looking round with something astonishingly like a smile of triumph, “all the time. Why shouldn’t I go where I do please, nows and again? Why should I allus wait on your bidding—eh?” it asked a little pettishly.

“No reason at all,” said Elfrida kindly; “and now, dear, dear Mouldiwarp, please take us away.”

A confused sound of shouting mixed with the barking of dogs hurried her words a little.

“The hunt is up,” said the old witch-nurse.

“I don’t hold with hunting,” said the Mouldiwarp hastily, “nor yet with dogs. I never could abide dogs, drat the nasty, noisy, toothy things! Here, come inside.”

“Inside where?” said Edred.

“Inside my house,” said the mole.

And then, whether they all got smaller or whether the crack in the chalk got bigger they never quite knew, but they found themselves walking that crack one by one. Only Elfrida got hold of Richard’s hand and held it fast, though he wriggled and twisted to get it free.

“I’m not going back to your own times with you,” he said. “I’ll go my own way.”

“Where to?” said Elfrida.

“To wherever I choose,” said Richard savagely, and regained possession of his own hand. It was too late—the chalk had closed over them all.

As the chalk had closed so thoroughly that not a gleam of daylight could be seen, you might have expected the air they had to breathe to be close and stuffy. Not a bit of it! Coming into the Mouldiwarp’s house out of the May sunshine was like coming out of a human house into the freshness of a May night. But it was darker than any night that ever was. Elfrida got hold of Edred’s hand and then of Richard’s. She always tried to remember what she was told, and the Mouldiwarp had said, “Always hold hands when there’s magic about.”

Richard let his hand be taken, but he said, quite sternly, “You understand I mean what I say: I won’t go back to their times with them.”

“You were much nicer in James the First’s time,” said Elfrida.

Then a sound like thunder shook the earth overhead, an almost deafening noise that made them thrill and hold each other very tight.

“It’s only the King’s horses and the King’s men hunting after you,” said the Mouldiwarp cheerfully. “Now I’ll go and make a white clock for you to go home on. You set where you be, and don’t touch nothing till I be come back again.”

Left alone in the fresh, deep darkness, Elfrida persisted in her questions.

“Why don’t you want to come with us to our times?”

“I hate your times. They’re ugly, they’re cruel,” said Richard.

“They don’t cut your head off for nothing anyhow in our times,” said Edred, “and shut you up in the Tower.”

“They do worse things,” Richard said. “I know. They make people work fourteen hours a day for nine shillings a week, so that they never have enough to eat or wear, and no time to sleep or to be happy in. They won’t give people food or clothes, or let them work to get them; and then they put the people in prison if they take enough to keep them alive. They let people get horrid diseases, till their jaws drop off, so as to have a particular kind of china. Women have to go out to work instead of looking after their babies, and the little girl that’s left in charge drops the baby and it’s crippled for life. Oh! I know. I won’t go back with you. You might keep me there for ever.” He shuddered.

“I wouldn’t. And I can’t help about people working, and not enough money and that,” said Edred.

“If I were Lord Arden,” said Richard, through the darkness, “I’d make a vow, and I’d keep it too, never to have a day’s holiday or do a single thing I liked till all those things were stopped. But in your time nobody cares.”

“It’s not true,” said Elfrida; “we do care—when we know about it. Only we can’t do anything.”

“I am Lord Arden,” said Edred, “and when I grow up I’ll do what you say. I shall be in the House of Lords, I think, and of course the House of Lords would have to pay attention to me when I said things. I’ll remember everything you say, and tell them about it.”

“You’re not grown up yet,” said Richard, “and your father’s Lord Arden, not you.”

“Father’s dead, you know,” said Elfrida, in a hushed voice.

“How do you know?” asked Richard.

“There was a letter——”

“Do you think I’d trust a letter?” Richard asked indignantly. “If I hadn’t seen my daddy lying dead, do you think I’d believe it? Not till I’d gone back and seen how he died, and where, and had vengeance on the man who’d killed him.”

“But he wasn’t killed.”

“How do you know? You’ve been hunting for the beastly treasure, and never even tried to go back to the time when he was alive—such a little time ago—and find out what really did happen to him.”

“I didn’t know we could,” said Elfrida, choking. “And even if we could, it wouldn’t be right, would it? Aunt Edith said he was in heaven. We couldn’t go there, you know. It isn’t like history—it’s all different.”

“Well, then,” said Richard, “I shall have to tell you. You know, I rather took a fancy to you two kids that Gunpowder Plot time; and after you’d gone back to your own times asked Betty Lovell who you were, and she said you were Lord Arden. So the next time I wanted to get away from—from where I was—I gave orders to be taken to Lord Arden. And it——”

“Come along, do, dear,” said the sudden voice of the Mouldiwarp. “The clock’s all ready.”

A soft light was pressing against their eyes—growing, growing. They saw now that they were in a great chalk cave—the smugglers’ cave, Edred had hardly a doubt. And in the middle of its floor of smooth sand was a great clock-face—figures and hands and all—made of softly gleaming pearls set in ivory. Light seemed to flow from this, and to be reflected back on it by the white chalk walls. It was the most beautiful piece of jeweller’s work that the children—or, I imagine, any one else—had ever seen.

“Sit on the minute hand,” said the Mouldiwarp, “and home you go.”

“But I can’t go,” said Edred grimly, “till I’ve heard what Richard was saying.”

“You’ll be caught, then, by the King and his soldiers,” said the witch.

“I must risk that,” said Edred quite quietly. “I will not go near the white clock till Richard has told me what he means.”

“I’ll give him one minute,” said the Mouldiwarp crossly, “not no more than that. I’m sick to death of it, so I am.”

“Oh, don’t be cross,” said Elfrida.

“I bain’t,” said the Mouldiwarp, “not under my fur. It’s this Chop-and-change, and I-will-and-I-won’t as makes me so worritable.”

“Tell me, what did you mean—about my father?” Edred said again.

“I tried to find you—I asked for Lord Arden. What I found wasn’t you—it was your father. And the time was your time, July, 1908.”

“WHAT!” cried Edred and Elfrida together.

“Your father—he’s alive—don’t you understand? And you’ve been bothering about finding treasure instead of about finding him.”

“Daddy—alive!” Elfrida clung to her brother. “Oh, it’s not right, mixing him up with magic and things. Oh, you’re cruel—I hate you! I know well enough I shall never see my daddy again.”

“You will if you aren’t little cowards as well as little duffers,” said Richard scornfully. “You go and find him, that’s what you’ve got to do. So long!”

And with that, before the Mouldiwarp or the nurse could interfere, he had leapt on to the long pearl and ivory minute hand of the clock and said, “Home!” just as duchesses (and other people) do to their coachmen (or footmen).

And before anything could be done the hands of the clock began to go round, slowly at first, then faster and faster, till at last they went so fast that they became quite invisible. The ivory and pearl figures of the clock could still be seen on the sand of the cave.

Edred and Elfrida, still clinging together, turned appealing eyes to the Mouldiwarp. They expected it to be very angry indeed, instead of which it seemed to be smiling. (Did you ever see a white mole smile? No? But then, perhaps you have never seen a white mole, and you cannot see a smile without seeing the smiler, except of course in the case of Cheshire cats.)

“He’s a bold boy, a brave boy,” said the witch.

“Ah!” said the Mouldiwarp, “he be summat like an Arden, he be.”

Edred detached himself from Elfrida and stiffened with a resolve to show the Mouldiwarp that he too was not so unlike an Arden as it had too hastily supposed.

“Can’t we get home?” Elfrida asked timidly. “Can’t you make us another white clock, or something?”

“Waste not, want not,” said the mole. “Always wear out your old clocks afore you buys new ’uns. Soon’s he gets off the hand the clock’ll stop; then you can get on it and go safe home.”

“But suppose the King finds us?” said Elfrida.

“He shan’t,” said Betty Lovell. “You open the chalky door, Mouldy, my love, and I’ll keep the King quiet till the young people’s gone home.”

“They’ll duck you for a witch,” said the Mouldiwarp, and it did not seem to mind the familiar way in which Betty spoke to it.

“Well, it’s a warm day,” said Betty; “by the time they get me to the pond you’ll be safe away. And the water’ll be nice and cool.”

“Oh, no,” said Edred and Elfrida together. “You’ll be drowned.” And Edred added, “I couldn’t allow that.”

“Bless your silly little hearts,” said the Mouldiwarp, “she won’t drown. She’ll just get home by the back door, that’s all. There’s a door at the bottom of every pond, if you can only find it.”

So Betty Lovell went out through the chalk to meet the anger of the King, with two kisses on her cheeks.

And suddenly there was the pearl and ivory clock again, all complete, minute hand and hour hand and second hand.

Edred and Elfrida sat down on the minute hand, and before the Mouldiwarp could open its long, narrow mouth to say a word Edred called out in a firm voice, “Take us to where Daddy is;” for he had learned from Richard that white clocks can be ordered about.

And the minute hand of pearl and ivory began to move, faster and faster and faster, till, if there had been any one to look at it, it would have been invisible.

But there wasn’t any one to look at it, for the Mouldiwarp had leaped on to the hour hand at the last moment, and was hanging on there by all its claws.

CHAPTER XIV
THE FINDING OF THE TREASURE

“To Richard Arden!” shouted the Mouldiwarp of Arden as it leaped on the hour hand of the pearl and ivory clock. And then the hands went round far too fast for speech to be possible. When the clock stopped, which it did quite suddenly, Edred caught his breath and shouted, “To my daddy!” at the top of his voice. And the hands began to move again so quickly that neither of the children had time to see where they had stopped. They just saw that they were in a room, and that the Mouldiwarp, who seemed suddenly to have grown to the size of an enormous Polar bear, leaned over the edge of the clock and caught at something with a paw a foot long. And then some one called out something that they couldn’t hear, and almost at once the clock stopped, and they saw something climb off the clock. And the clock was in the cave again. And there was Cousin Richard in quite different clothes from those he had worn at King Henry the Eighth’s maying. They were the kind of clothes Edred had worn in Boney’s time, and the cave was just as it had been then, with kegs and bales, and the stream running through it.

“You must come with us,” said the Mouldiwarp, slowly resuming its ordinary size. “Don’t you see? If these children let their father see them, they’ll have to explain the whole magic, and when once magic’s explained all the magic’s gone, like the scent out of scent when you leave the cork out of the bottle. But you can see him and help—if he wants help—without having to explain anything.”

“All right,” said Richard, and muttered something about “the Head of the House.” “Only,” he added, “I dropped my magic here.” He stooped to the sand and picked up a little stick with silver bells hung round it, like the one that Folly carries at a carnival. “It’s got the Arden arms and crest on it,” he said, pointing, and by the light of the pearl and ivory clock the children could see the shield and the chequers and the Mouldiwarp above. “Now I’m ready. Cousins, I take back everything I said. You see, my father’s dead . . . and if I’d only had half your chance. . . . That was what I thought. See? So give us your hand.”

The hands were given.

“But oh,” said Elfrida, “this is different from all the rest; that was a game, and this is—this is——”