omes
every year. An' it keeps 'em so busy they fair scuffle to get 'em
done."

The most absorbing thing, however, was the preparations to be made
before Colin could be transported with sufficient secrecy to the
garden. No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after
they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk
outside the ivied walls. As each day passed, Colin had become more and
more fixed in his feeling that the mystery surrounding the garden was
one of its greatest charms. Nothing must spoil that. No one must ever
suspect that they had a secret. People must think that he was simply
going out with Mary and Dickon because he liked them and did not object
to their looking at him. They had long and quite delightful talks
about their route. They would go up this path and down that one and
cross the other and go round among the fountain flower-beds as if they
were looking at the "bedding-out plants" the head gardener, Mr. Roach,
had been having arranged. That would seem such a rational thing to do
that no one would think it at all mysterious. They would turn into the
shrubbery walks and lose themselves until they came to the long walls.
It was almost as serious and elaborately thought out as the plans of
march made by great generals in time of war.

Rumors of the new and curious things which were occurring in the
invalid's apartments had of course filtered through the servants' hall
into the stable yards and out among the gardeners, but notwithstanding
this, Mr. Roach was startled one day when he received orders from
Master Colin's room to the effect that he must report himself in the
apartment no outsider had ever seen, as the invalid himself desired to
speak to him.

"Well, well," he said to himself as he hurriedly changed his coat,
"what's to do now? His Royal Highness that wasn't to be looked at
calling up a man he's never set eyes on."

Mr. Roach was not without curiosity. He had never caught even a
glimpse of the boy and had heard a dozen exaggerated stories about his
uncanny looks and ways and his insane tempers. The thing he had heard
oftenest was that he might die at any moment and there had been
numerous fanciful descriptions of a humped back and helpless limbs,
given by people who had never seen him.

"Things are changing in this house, Mr. Roach," said Mrs. Medlock, as
she led him up the back staircase to the corridor on to which opened
the hitherto mys