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 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 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 wav