been better," Kink said, "if your uncle had handed you
the license right away--not made a mystery of it."

"Oh, no," said Hester.

As it happened, they were destined not to reach Evesham that day, for
at Abbots Salford Moses cast a shoe, and that meant the blacksmith and
delay. When the accident was discovered, and the children were
surrounding Moses and helping Kink in his examination of the hoof, a
farmer who was walking by stopped and joined them. He asked the
trouble, and offered them his advice.

"You put your caravan in my yard there," he said, pointing to a
beautiful gateway just ahead, "and you make yourselves comfortable
there while the horse is being shod. I'll show you the house if you
like," he added; "it's very old, and haunted too, and there's a grand
boatingplace at the weir just across the meadows. Don't worry about the
horse or anything. If you go to bed early and get up early, it will
come to the same thing as if you had gone right on."

Everyone except Robert, who liked to see his time-tables obeyed, and
perhaps Gregory, who had been deprived for some days of his office of
asking leave for a camping-ground, and was now balked again, was glad
of the mischance that brought camp so early, and Hester was wild with
pleasure, for Salford Hall is an old mansion of grey stone, built three
hundred years ago, and now mysterious and, except for a few rooms,
desolate. It has also an old garden and a fish-pond, and a little Roman
Catholic chapel whose altar-candles have been alight for centuries.

The farmer was very kind. He gave the children leave to go anywhere and
everywhere, but they must not, he said, run or jump, because the floors
were not strong enough. He led them from room to room, to the
dancing-gallery in the roof.

There was a very old bagatelle-table in one room, all moth-eaten, and a
few old pictures still on the walls--a knight and his lady with
Elizabethan ruffs, and a portrait of a greyhound. From a top window the
farmer showed them Evesham's bell-tower.

But the most exciting moment was when each of them in turn was allowed
to hide in the priest's hiding-hole. This was a very ingenious cupboard
behind a row of shelves intended to have books or china on them, which
swung back when you loosened a catch. Hester crouched here and shut her
eyes, and firmly believed that the Protestants were after her.

In her next letter she implored her mother to take the Hall, and live
there in the summe