There was a lot of talk and a lot of letter-writing before any one seemed to be able to be sure who was Lord Arden. If the father of Edred and Elfrida had wanted to dispute about it no doubt there would have been enough work to keep the lawyers busy for years, and seas of ink would have been spilled and thunders of eloquence spent on the question. But as the present Lord Arden was an honest man and only too anxious that Dickie should have everything that belonged to him, even the lawyers had to cut their work short.

When Edred saw how his father tried his best to find out the truth about Dickie\'s birth, and how willing he was to give up what he had thought was his own, if it should prove to be not his, do you think he was not glad to know that he had done his duty, and rescued his cousin, and had not, by any meanness or any indecision, brought dishonor on the name of Arden? As for Elfrida, when she knew the whole story of that night of rescue, she admired her brother so much that it made him almost uncomfortable. However, she now looked up[276] to him in all things and consulted him about everything, and, after all, this is very pleasant from your sister, especially when every one has been rather in the habit of suggesting that she is better than you are, as well as cleverer.

To Dickie Lord Arden said, "Of course, if anything should happen to show that I am really Lord Arden, you won\'t desert us, Dickie. You shall go to school with Edred and be brought up like my very own son."

And, like Lord Arden\'s very own son, Dickie lived at the house in Arden Castle, and grew to love it more and more. He no longer wanted to get away from these present times to those old days when James the First was King. The times you are born in are always more home-like than any other times can be. When Dickie lived miserably at Deptford he always longed to go to those old times, as a man who is unhappy at home may wish to travel to other countries. But a man who is happy in his home does not want to leave it. And at Arden Dickie was happy. The training he had had in the old-world life enabled him to take his place and to be unembarrassed with the Ardens and their friends as he was with the Beales and theirs. "A little shy," the Ardens\' friends told each other, "but what fine manners! And to think he was only a tramp! Lord Arden has certainly done wonders with him!"[277]

So Lord Arden got the credit of all that Dickie had learned from his tutors in James the First\'s time.

It is not in the nature of any child to brood continually on the past or the future. The child lives in the present. And Dickie lived at Arden and loved it, and enjoyed himself; and Lord Arden bought him a pony, so that his lame foot was hardly any drag at all. The other children had a donkey-cart, and the three made all sorts of interesting expeditions.

Once they went over to Talbot Court, and saw the secret place where Edward Talbot had hidden his confession about having stolen the Arden baby, three generations before. Also they saw the portrait of the Lady Talbot who had been a Miss Arden. In rose-colored brocade she was, with a green silk petticoat and her powdered hair dressed high over a great cushion, but her eyes and her mouth were the eyes of Dickie of Deptford.

Lady Talbot was very charming to the children, played hide-and-seek with them, and gave them a delightful and varied tea in the yew arbor.

"I\'m glad you wouldn\'t let me adopt you, Richard," she said, when Elfrida and Edred had been sent to her garden to get a basket of peaches to take home with them, "because just when I had become entirely attached to you,[278] you would have found out your real relations, and where would your poor foster-mother have been then?"

"If I could have stayed with you I would," said Dickie seriously. "I did like you most awfully, even then. You are very like the Lady Arden whose husband was shut up in the Tower for the Gunpowder Plot."

"So they tell me," said Lady Talbot, "but how do you know it?"

"I don\'t know," said Dickie confused, "but you are like her."

"You must have seen a portrait of her. There\'s one in the National Portrait Gallery. She was a Delamere, and my name was Delamere, too, before I was married. She was one of the same family, you see, dear."

Dickie put his arms round her waist as she sat beside him, and laid his head on her shoulder.

"I wish you\'d really been my mother," he said, and his thoughts were back in the other days with the mother who wore a ruff and hoop. Lady Talbot hugged him tenderly.

"My dear little Dickie," she said, "you don\'t wish it as much as I do."

"There are all sorts of things a chap can\'t be sure of—things you mustn\'t tell any one. Secrets, you know—honorable secrets. But if it was your own mother it would be different.[279] But if you haven\'t got a mother you have to decide everything for yourself."

"Won\'t you let me help you?" she asked.

Dickie, his head on her shoulder, was for one wild moment tempted to tell her everything—the whole story, from beginning to end. But he knew that she could not understand it—or even believe it. No grown-up person could. A chap\'s own mother might have, perhaps—but perhaps not, too.

"I can\'t tell you," he said at last, "only I don\'t think I want to be Lord Arden. At least, I do, frightfully. It\'s so splendid, all the things the Ardens did—in history, you know. But I don\'t want to turn people out—and you know Edred came and saved me from those people. It feels hateful when I think perhaps they\'ll have to turn out just because I happened to turn up. Sometimes I feel as if I simply couldn\'t bear it."

"You dear child!" she said; "of course you feel that. But don\'t let your mind dwell on it. Don\'t think about it. You\'re only a little boy. Be happy and jolly, and don\'t worry about grown-up things. Leave grown-up things to the grown-ups."

"You see," Dickie told her, "somehow I\'ve always had to worry about grown-up things. What with Beale, and one thing and another."[280]

"That was the man you ran away from me to go to?"

"Yes," said Dickie gravely; "you see, I was responsible for Beale."

"And now? Don\'t you feel responsible any more?"

"No," said Dickie, in businesslike tones; "you see, I\'ve settled Beale in life. You can\'t be responsible for married people. They\'re responsible for each other. So now I\'ve got only my own affairs to think of. And the Ardens. I don\'t know what to do."

"Do? why, there\'s nothing to do except to enjoy yourself and learn your lessons and be happy," she told him. "Don\'t worry your little head. Just enjoy yourself, and forget that you ever had any responsibilities."

"I\'ll try," he told her, and then the others came back with their peaches, and there was nothing more to be said but "Thank you very much" and good-bye.

Exploring the old smugglers\' caves was exciting and delightful, as exploring caves always is. It turned out that more than one old man in the village had heard from his father about the caves and the smuggling that had gone on in those parts in old ancient days. But they had not thought it their place to talk about such things, and I suspect that in their hearts they[281] did not more than half believe them. Old Beale said—

"Why didn\'t you ask me? I could a-told you where they was. Only I shouldn\'t a done fear you\'d break your precious necks."

Of course the children were desperately anxious to open up the brickwork and let the stream come out into the light of day; only their father thought it would be too expensive. But Edred and Elfrida worried and bothered in a perfectly gentle and polite way till at last a very jolly gentleman in spectacles, who came down to spend a couple of days, took their part. From the moment he owned himself an engineer Edred and Elfrida gave him no peace, and he seemed quite pleased to be taken to see the caves. He pointed out that the removal of the simple dam would send the water back into the old channel. It would be perfectly simple to have the brickwork knocked out, and to let the stream find its way back, if it could, to its old channel, and thence down the arched way which Edred and Elfrida told him they were certain was under a mound below the Castle.

"You know a lot about it, don\'t you?" he said good-humoredly.

"Yes," said Edred simply.

Then they all went down to the mound, and the engineer then poked and prodded it and said he should not wonder if they were not so[282] far out. And then Beale and another man came with spades, and presently there was the arch, as good as ever, and they exclaimed and admired and went back to the caves.

It was a grand moment when the bricks had been taken out and daylight poured into the cave, and nothing remained but to break down the dam and let the water run out of the darkness into the sunshine. You can imagine with what mixed feelings the children wondered whether they would rather stay in the cave and see the dam demolished, or stay outside and see the stream rush out. In the end the boys stayed within, and it was only Elfrida and her father who saw the stream emerge. They sat on a hillock among the thin harebells and wild thyme and sweet lavender-colored gipsy roses, with their eyes fixed on the opening in the hillside, and waited and waited and waited for a very long time.

"Won\'t you mind frightfully, daddy," Elfrida asked during this long waiting, "if it turns out that you\'re not Lord Arden?"

He paused a moment before he decided to answer her without reserve.

"Yes," he said, "I shall mind, frightfully. And that\'s just why we must do everything we possibly can to prove that Dickie is the rightful heir, so that whether he has the title or I have it you and I may never have to reproach[283] ourselves for having left a single stone unturned to give him his rights—whatever they are."

"And you, yours, daddy."

"And me, mine. Anyhow, if he is Lord Arden I shall probably be appointed his guardian, and we shall all live together here just the same. Only I shall go back to being plain Arden."

"I believe Dickie is Lord Arden," Elfrida began, and I am not at all sure that she would not have gone on to give her reasons, including the whole story which the Mouldiestwarp had told to Dickie; but at that moment there was a roaring, rushing sound from inside the cave, and a flash of shiny silver gleamed across that dark gap in the hillside. There was a burst of imprisoned splendor. The stream leaped out and flowed right and left over the dry grass, till it lapped in tiny waves against their hillock—"like sand castles," as Elfrida observed. It spread out in a lake, wider and wider; but presently gathered itself together and began to creep down the hill, winding in and out among the hillocks in an ever-deepening stream.

"Come on, childie, let\'s make for the moat. We shall get there first, if we run our hardest," Elfrida\'s father said. And he ran, with his little daughter\'s hand in his.

They got there first. The stream, knowing[284] its own mind better and better as it recognized its old road, reached the Castle, and by dinner-time all the grass round the Castle was under water. By tea-time the water in the moat was a foot or more deep, and when they got up next morning the Castle was surrounded by a splendid moat fifty feet wide, and a stream ran from it, in a zigzag way it is true, but still it ran, to the lower arch under the mound, and disappeared there, to run underground into the sea. They enjoyed the moat for one whole day, and then the stream was dammed again and condemned to run underground till next spring, by which time the walls of the Castle would have been examined and concrete laid to their base, lest the water should creep through and sap the foundations.

"It\'s going to be a very costly business, it seems," Elfrida heard her father say to the engineer, "and I don\'t know that I ought to do it. But I can\'t resist the temptation. I shall have to economize in other directions, that\'s all."

When Elfrida had heard this she went to Dickie and Edred, who were fishing in the cave, and told them what she had heard.

"And we must have another try for the treasure," she said. "Whoever has the Castle will want to restore it; they\'ve got those pictures of it as it used to be. And then there are all the cottages to rebuild. Dear Dickie, you\'re so[285] clever, do think of some way to find the treasure."

So Dickie thought.

And presently he said—

"You once saw the treasure being carried to the secret room—in a picture, didn\'t you?"

They told him yes.

"Then why didn\'t you go back to that time and see it really?"

"We hadn\'t the clothes. Everything in our magic depended on clothes."

"Mine doesn\'t. Shall we go?"

"There were lots of soldiers in the picture," said Edred, "and fighting."

"I\'m not afraid of soldiers," said Elfrida very quickly, "and you\'re not afraid of anything, Edred—you know you aren\'t."

"You can\'t be or you couldn\'t have come after me right into the cave in the middle of the night. Come on. Stand close together and I\'ll spread out the moon-seeds."

So Dickie said, and they stood, and he spread the moon-seeds out, and he wished to be with the party of men who were hiding the treasure. But before he spread out the seeds he took certain other things in his left hand and held them closely. And instantly they were.

They were standing very close together, all three of them, in a niche in a narrow, dark[286] passage, and men went by them carrying heavy chests, and great sacks of leather, and bundles tied up in straw and in handkerchiefs. The men had long hair and the kind of clothes you know were worn when Charles the First was King. And the children wore the dresses of that time and the boys had little swords at their sides. When the last bundle had been carried, the last chest set down with a dump on the stone floor of some room beyond, the children heard a door shut and a key turned, and then the men came back all together along the passage, and the children followed them. Presently torchlight gave way to daylight as they came out into the open air. But they had to come on hands and knees, for the path sloped steeply up and the opening was very low. The chests must have been pushed or pulled through. They could never have been carried.

The children turned and looked at the opening. It was in the courtyard wall, the courtyard that was now a smooth grass lawn and not the rough, daisied grass plot dotted with heaps of broken stone and masonry that they were used to see. And as they looked two men picked up a great stone and staggered forward with it and laid it on the stone floor of the secret passage just where it ended at the edge of the grass. Then another stone and another. The stones fitted into their places like bits of a Chinese puzzle.[287] There was mortar or cement at their edges, and when the last stone was replaced no one could tell those stones from the other stones that formed the wall. Only the grass in front of them was trampled and broken.

"Fetch food and break it about," said the man who seemed to be in command, "that it may look as though the men had eaten here. And trample the grass at other places. I give the Roundhead dogs another hour to break down our last defense. Children, go to your mother. This is no place for you."

They knew the way. They had seen it in the picture. Edred and Elfrida turned to go. But Dickie whispered, "Don\'t wait for me. I\'ve something yet to do."

And when the soldiers had gone to get food and strew it about, as they had been told to do, Dickie crept up to the ............