the green and white curtains; about him were the
tapestry walls and the heavy furniture of The Dream.

"Oh!" he cried aloud, "I've found it again!--I've found it!--I've found
it!"

And then the old nurse with the hooped petticoats and the queer cap and
the white ruff was bending over him; her wrinkled face was alight with
love and tenderness.

"So thou'rt awake at last," she said. "Did'st thou find thy friend in
thy dreams?"

Dickie hugged her.

"I've found the way back," he said; "I don't know which is the dream and
which is real--but _you_ know."

"Yes," said the old nurse, "I know. The one is as real as the other."

He sprang out of bed and went leaping round the room, jumping on to
chairs and off them, running and dancing.

"What ails the child?" the nurse grumbled; "get thy hose on, for shame,
taking a chill as like as not. What ails thee to act so?"

"It's the not being lame," Dickie explained, coming to a standstill by
the window that looked out on the good green garden. "You don't know how
wonderful it seems, just at first, you know, _not_ to be lame."

CHAPTER VI

BURIED TREASURE

AND then, as he stood there in the sunshine, he suddenly knew.

Having succeeded in dreaming once again the dream which he had so longed
to dream, Dickie Harding looked out of the window of the dream-house in
Deptford into the dream-garden with its cut yew-trees and box avenues
and bowling-greens, and perceived without doubt that this was no dream,
but real--as real as the other Deptford where he had sown Artistic Bird
Seed and gathered moonflowers and reaped the silver seeds of magic, for
it _was_ magic. Dickie was sure of it now. He had not lived in the time
of the First James, be sure, without hearing magic talked of. And it
seemed quite plain to him that if this that had happened to him was not
magic, then there never was and never would be any magic to happen to
any one. He turned from the window and looked at the tapestry-hung
room--the big bed, the pleasant, wrinkled face of the nurse--and he knew
that all this was as real as anything that had happened to him in that
other life where he was a little lame boy who took the road with a
dirty tramp for father, and lay in the bed with green curtains.

"Was thy friend well, in thy dream?" the nurse asked.

"Yes, oh, yes," said Dickie, "and I carved boxes in my dream, and sold
them, and I want to learn a lot more things, so that when I go back
again--I mean