asked.

Chris looked more closely, touching nothing. His voice was bewildered.
"Well--it seems to me I may have seen them before--they sort of look
familiar, but--I couldn't be sure."

His master's voice was gentle. "They are your twentieth-century
clothes, my lad. The ones you wear in your own time. And deeply as it
hurts me to say it, the moment has come for you to put them on."

Chris raised startled worried eyes to the dark penetrating ones
watching him so quietly from the high-backed chair. "Not _yet_? I
don't have to go _now_, do I, sir?" And as he saw insistence in Mr.
Wicker's face he began to expostulate as a child does when it wants to
retard its bedtime.

"But I've scarcely got back--I mean, here. And we've only had one
talk--I'm sure there'll be other things I've forgotten to say that you
should know--"

He threw out his hands as if to grasp at something that might hold him
there.

"And--and--I didn't say good-bye to Captain Blizzard or Mr. Finney.
They were wonderful to me, really they were! And"--his voice suddenly
became very small and high, disappearing to a whisper at the end--"and
Becky and Ned and dear Amos--"

He stood there against the door, swallowing hard with his head down,
his stomach and his throat a mass of hateful knots and the whole of
him swamped with unhappiness. Mr. Wicker had never moved, his elbows
on the arms of his chair, and his folded hands just touching his chin.
At last Chris whispered: "Does it have to be?"

[Illustration]

"It has to be," said Mr. Wicker.

Without a word, Chris took the folded clothes that seemed so
unfamiliar off the stool and dressed behind the other leather chair,
his lower lip trembling. Mechanically, as boys will, he shifted
everything from his pockets to those of the trousers he had just put
on. With careful slow gestures he folded up the knee breeches, the
full-sleeved shirt, the long white hose and silver buckled shoes, the
flare-backed jacket last of all, and put them where his clothes had
been.

Mr. Wicker then spoke, getting slowly to his feet and standing with
his back to the fire.

"I am afraid I shall have to have the leather pouch, Christopher," he
said, holding out his hand. Chris took it off and put it in the long,
strong hand of the magician.

[Illustration]

"More than that," Mr. Wicker said, putting the pouch in his pocket, "I
shall have to take everything from you that you have gained here,
Christopher." He paused. "All