urs I shall do very
well without them again. You shall have your rights, my dear boy, and I
shan't be hurt by it. Don't you think that."

Dickie thought several things and shook the other's hand very hard.

The tale of Dickie's rescue from the cave was the talk of the
countryside. True was praised much, but Edred more. Why had no one else
thought of putting the dog on the scent? Edred said that it was mostly
True's doing. And the people praised his modesty. And nobody, except
perhaps Elfrida, ever understood what it had cost Edred to go that night
through the dark and rescue his cousin.

Edred's father and Mrs. Honeysett agreed that Edred had done it in the
delirium of a fever, brought on by his anxiety about his friend and
playmate. People do, you know, do odd things in fevers that they would
never do at other times.

The redheaded man and the woman were tried at the assizes and punished.
If you ask me how they knew about the caves which none of the country
people seemed to know of, I can only answer that I don't know. Only I
know that every one you know knows lots of things that you don't know
they know.

When they all went a week later to explore the caves, they found a
curious arrangement of brickwork and cement and clay, shutting up a hole
through which the stream had evidently once flowed out into the open
air. It now flowed away into darkness. Lord Arden pointed out how its
course had been diverted and made to run down underground to the sea.

"We might let it come back to the moat," said Edred. "It used to run
that way. It says so in the 'History of Arden.'"

"We must decide that later," said his father, who had a long blue
lawyer's letter in his pocket.

CHAPTER XI

LORD ARDEN

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 thi