d wood. I'd like to try. I've got the knife they give me
to cut the string of the basket in the train. It's jolly sharp."

"What sort o' wood?" Beale asked.

"It was mahogany I dreamed I made my box with," said Dickie. "I would
like to try."

"Off 'is poor chump," Beale murmured with bitter self-reproach; "my
doin' too--puttin' 'im on to a job like Talbot Court, the nipper is."

He stretched himself and got up.

"I'll get yer a bit of mahogany from somewheres," he said very gently.
"I didn't mean nothing, old chap. You keep all on about yer dreams. I
don't mind. I likes it. Let's get a brace o' kippers and make a night of
it."

So they went back to the Gravesend lodging-house.

Next day Mr. Beale produced the lonely leg of a sofa--mahogany, a fat
round turned leg, old and seasoned.

"This what you want?" he asked.

Dickie took it eagerly. "I do wonder if I can," he said. "I feel just
exactly like as if I could. I say, farver, let's get out in the woods
somewheres quiet and take our grub along. Somewheres where nobody can't
say, 'What you up to?' and make a mock of me."

They found a place such as Dickie desired, a warm, sunny nest in the
heart of a green wood, and all through the long, warm hours of the
autumn day Mr. Beale lay lazy in the sunshine while Dickie, very pale
and determined, sliced, chipped, and picked at the sofa leg with the
knife the gardener had given him.

It was hard to make him lay the work down even for dinner, which was of
a delicious and extravagant kind--new bread, German sausage, and beer in
a flat bottle. For from the moment when the knife touched the wood
Dickie knew that he had not forgotten, and that what he had done in the
Deptford dockyard under the eyes of Sebastian, the shipwright who had
helped to sink the Armada, he could do now alone in the woods beyond
Gravesend.

It was after dinner that Mr. Beale began to be interested.

"Swelp me!" he said; "but you've got the hang of it somehow. A box,
ain't it?"

"A box," said Dickie, smoothing a rough corner; "a box with a lid that
fits. And I'll carve our arms on the top--see, I've left that bit
stickin' up a purpose."

It was the hardest day's work Dickie had ever done. He stuck to it and
stuck to it and stuck to it till there was hardly light left to see it
by. But before the light was wholly gone the box had wholly come--with
the carved coat of arms and the lid that fitted.

"Well," said Mr. Beale, striking a match to l