Harding's Luck Part 38

"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 d.i.c.kie _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 d.i.c.kie; 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 gra.s.s, till it lapped in tiny waves against their hillock--"like sand castles," as Elfrida observed. It spread out in a lake, wider and wider; but presently gathered itself together and began to creep down the hill, winding in and out among the hillocks in an ever-deepening stream.

"Come on, childie, let's make for the moat. We shall get there first, if we run our hardest," Elfrida's father said. And he ran, with his little daughter's hand in his.

They got there first. The stream, knowing its own mind better and better as it recognized its old road, reached the Castle, and by dinner-time all the gra.s.s round the Castle was under water. By tea-time the water in the moat was a foot or more deep, and when they got up next morning the Castle was surrounded by a splendid moat fifty feet wide, and a stream ran from it, in a zigzag way it is true, but still it ran, to the lower arch under the mound, and disappeared there, to run underground into the sea. They enjoyed the moat for one whole day, and then the stream was dammed again and condemned to run underground till next spring, by which time the walls of the Castle would have been examined and concrete laid to their base, lest the water should creep through and sap the foundations.

"It's going to be a very costly business, it seems," Elfrida heard her father say to the engineer, "and I don't know that I ought to do it. But I can't resist the temptation. I shall have to economize in other directions, that's all."

When Elfrida had heard this she went to d.i.c.kie and Edred, who were fishing in the cave, and told them what she had heard.

"And we _must_ have another try for the treasure," she said. "Whoever has the Castle will want to restore it; they've got those pictures of it as it used to be. And then there are all the cottages to rebuild. Dear d.i.c.kie, you're so clever, do think of some way to find the treasure."

So d.i.c.kie thought.

And presently he said--

"You once saw the treasure being carried to the secret room--in a picture, didn't you?"

They told him yes.

"Then why didn't you go back to that time and see it really?"

"We hadn't the clothes. Everything in our magic depended on clothes."

"Mine doesn't. Shall we go?"

"There were lots of soldiers in the picture," said Edred, "and fighting."

"I'm not afraid of soldiers," said Elfrida very quickly, "and you're not afraid of _anything_, Edred--you know you aren't."

"You can't be or you couldn't have come after me right into the cave in the middle of the night. Come on. Stand close together and I'll spread out the moon-seeds."

So d.i.c.kie said, and they stood, and he spread the moon-seeds out, and he wished to be with the party of men who were hiding the treasure. But before he spread out the seeds he took certain other things in his left hand and held them closely. And instantly they were.

They were standing very close together, all three of them, in a niche in a narrow, dark pa.s.sage, and men went by them carrying heavy chests, and great sacks of leather, and bundles tied up in straw and in handkerchiefs. The men had long hair and the kind of clothes you know were worn when Charles the First was King. And the children wore the dresses of that time and the boys had little swords at their sides. When the last bundle had been carried, the last chest set down with a dump on the stone floor of some room beyond, the children heard a door shut and a key turned, and then the men came back all together along the pa.s.sage, and the children followed them. Presently torchlight gave way to daylight as they came out into the open air. But they had to come on hands and knees, for the path sloped steeply up and the opening was very low. The chests must have been pushed or pulled through. They could never have been carried.

The children turned and looked at the opening. It was in the courtyard wall, the courtyard that was now a smooth gra.s.s lawn and not the rough, daisied gra.s.s plot dotted with heaps of broken stone and masonry that they were used to see. And as they looked two men picked up a great stone and staggered forward with it and laid it on the stone floor of the secret pa.s.sage just where it ended at the edge of the gra.s.s. Then another stone and another. The stones fitted into their places like bits of a Chinese puzzle. There was mortar or cement at their edges, and when the last stone was replaced no one could tell those stones from the other stones that formed the wall. Only the gra.s.s in front of them was trampled and broken.

"Fetch food and break it about," said the man who seemed to be in command, "that it may look as though the men had eaten here. And trample the gra.s.s at other places. I give the Roundhead dogs another hour to break down our last defense. Children, go to your mother. This is no place for you."

They knew the way. They had seen it in the picture. Edred and Elfrida turned to go. But d.i.c.kie whispered, "Don't wait for me. I've something yet to do."

And when the soldiers had gone to get food and strew it about, as they had been told to do, d.i.c.kie crept up to the stones that had been removed, from which he had never taken his eyes, knelt down and scratched on one of the stones with one of the big nails he had brought in his hand. It blunted over and he took another, hiding in the chapel doorway when the men came back with the food.

"Every man to his post and G.o.d save us all!" cried the captain when the food was spread. They clattered off--they were in their armor now--and d.i.c.kie knelt down again and went on scratching with the nail.

The air was full of shouting, and the sound of guns, and the clash of armor, and a shattering sound like a giant mallet striking a giant drum--a sound that came and came again at five-minute intervals--and the shrieks of wounded men. d.i.c.kie pressed up the gra.s.s to cover the marks he had made on the stone, so low as to be almost underground and quite hidden by the gra.s.s roots.

Then he brushed the stone dust from his hands and stood up.

The treasure was found and its hiding-place marked. Now he would find Edred and Elfrida, and they would go back. Whether he was Lord of Arden or no, it was he and no other who had restored the fallen fortunes of that n.o.ble house.

He turned to go the way his cousins had gone. He could see the men-at-arms crowding in the archway of the great gate tower. From a window to his right a lady leaned, pale with terror, and with her were Edred and Elfrida--he could just see their white faces. He made for the door below that window. But it was too late. That dull, thudding sound came again, and this time it was followed by a great crash and a great shouting. The blue sky showed through the archway where the tall gates had been and under the arch was a ma.s.s of men shouting, screaming, struggling, and the gleam of steel and the scarlet of brave blood.

d.i.c.kie forgot all about the door below the window, forgot all about his cousins, forgot that he had found the treasure and that it was now his business to get himself and the others safely back to their own times.

He only saw the house he loved broken into by men he hated; he saw the men he loved spending their blood like water to defend that house.

He drew the little sword that hung at his side and shouting "An Arden!

an Arden!" he rushed towards the swaying, staggering _melee_. He reached it just as the leader of the attacking party had hewn his way through the Arden men and taken his first step on the flagged path of the courtyard. The first step was his last. He stopped, a big, burly fellow in a leathern coat and steel round cap, and looked, bewildered, at the little figure coming at him with all the fire and courage of the Ardens burning in his blue eyes. The big man laughed, and as he laughed d.i.c.kie lunged with his sword--the way his tutor had taught him--and the little sword--no tailor's ornament to a Court dress, but a piece of true steel--went straight and true up into the heart of that big rebel. The man fell, wrenching the blade from d.i.c.kie's hand.

A shout of fury went up from the enemy. A shout of pride and triumph from the Arden men. Men struggled and fought all about him. Next moment d.i.c.kie's hands were tied with a handkerchief, and he stood there breathless and trembling with pride.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I HAVE KILLED A MAN,' HE SAID"

_Page 290_]

"I have killed a man," he said; "I have killed a man for the King and for Arden."

They shut him up in the fuel shed and locked the door. Pride and anger filled him. He could think of nothing but that one good thrust for the good cause. But presently he remembered.

He had brought his cousins here--he must get them back safely. But how?

On a quiet evening on the road Beale had taught him how to untie hands tied behind the back. He remembered the lesson now and set to work--but it was slow work. And all the time he was thinking, thinking. How could he get out? He knew the fuel shed well enough. The door was strong, there was a beech bar outside. But it was not roofed with tile or lead, as the rest of the Castle was. And d.i.c.kie knew something about thatch.

Not for nothing had he watched the men thatching the oast-house by the Medway. When his hands were free he stood up and felt for the pins that fasten the thatch.

Suddenly his hands fell by his side. Even if he got out, how could he find his cousins? He would only be found by the rebels and be locked away more securely. He lay down on the floor, lay quite still there. It was despair. This was the end of all his cleverness. He had brought Edred and Elfrida into danger, and he could not get them back again. His anger had led him to defy the Roundheads, and to gratify his hate of them he had sacrificed those two who trusted him. He lay there a long time, and if he cried a little it was very dark in the fuel house, and there was no one to see him.

He was not crying, however, but thinking, thinking, thinking, and trying to find some way out, when he heard a little scratch, scratching on the corner of the shed. He sat up and listened. The scratching went on. He held his breath. Could it be that some one was trying to get in to help him? Nonsense, of course it was only a rat. Next moment a voice spoke so close to him that he started and all but cried out.

"Bide where you be, lad, bide still; 'tis only me--old Mouldiwarp of Arden. You be a bold lad, by my faith, so you be. Never an Arden better.

Never an Arden of them all."

"Oh, Mouldiwarp, dear Mouldiwarp, do help me! I led them into this--help me to get them back safe. Do, do, do!"

"So I will, den--dere ain't no reason in getting all of a fl.u.s.ter. It ain't fitten for a lad as 'as faced death same's what you 'ave," said the voice. "I've made a liddle tunnel for 'e--so I 'ave--'ere in dis 'ere corner--you come caten wise crose the floor and you'll feel it. You crawl down it, and outside you be sure enough."

d.i.c.kie went towards the voice, and sure enough, as the voice said, there was a hole in the ground, just big enough, it seemed, for him to crawl down on hands and knees.

"I'll go afore," said the Mouldiwarp, "you come arter. Dere's naught to be afeared on, Lord Arden."

"Am I really Lord Arden?" said d.i.c.kie, pausing.

"Sure's I'm alive you be," the mole answered; "yer uncle'll tell it you with all de lawyer's reasons to-morrow morning as sure's sure. Come along, den. Dere ain't no time to lose."

So d.i.c.kie went down on his hands and knees, and crept down the mole tunnel of soft, sweet-smelling earth, and then along, and then up--and there they were in the courtyard. There, too, were Edred and Elfrida.