teresting things to do at the cottage. He helped to wash True, cleaned
the knives, and rinsed lettuce for tea; helped to dry the tea-things,
and to fold the washing when Mrs. Beale brought it in out of the yard
in dry, sweet armfuls of white folds.

It was dusk when he bade them good-night, embracing each dog in turn,
and set out to walk the little way to the crossroads, where the dog-cart
returning from Cliffville would pick him up. But the dog-cart was a
little late, because the pony had dropped a shoe and had had to be taken
to the blacksmith's.

So when Dickie had waited a little while he began to think, as one
always does when people don't keep their appointments, that perhaps he
had mistaken the time, or that the clock at the cottage was slow. And
when he had waited a little longer, it seemed simply silly to be waiting
at all. So he picked up his crutch and got up from the milestone where
he had been sitting and set off to walk down to the Castle.

As he went he thought many things, and one of the things he thought was
that the memories of King James's time had grown dim and distant--he
looked down on Arden Castle and loved it, and felt that he asked no
better than to live there all his life with his cousins and their
father, and that, after all, the magic of a dream-life was not needed,
when life itself was so good and happy.

And just as he was thinking this a twig cracked sharply in the hedge.
Then a dozen twigs rustled and broke, and something like a great black
bird seemed to fly out at him and fold him in its wings.

It was not a bird--he knew that the next moment--but a big, dark cloak,
that some one had thrown over his head and shoulders, and through it
strong hands were holding him.

"Hold yer noise!" said a voice; "if you so much as squeak it'll be the
worse for you."

"Help!" shouted Dickie instantly.

He was thrown on to the ground. Hands fumbled, his face was cleared of
the cloak, and a handkerchief with a round pebble in it was stuffed into
his mouth so that he could not speak. Then he was dragged behind a hedge
and held there, while two voices whispered above him. The cloak was over
his head again now, and he could see nothing, but he could hear. He
heard one of the voices say, "Hush! they're coming." And then he heard
the sound of hoofs and wheels, and Lord Arden's jolly voice saying, "He
must have walked on; we shall catch him up all right." Then the sound of
wheels and hoofs died away, a