who knows. But it'll take time--put thy money in the great
press, and I'll keep the key. And next Friday as ever is, come your
little cousins."

They came. It was more difficult with them than it was with the
grown-ups to conceal the fact that he had not always been the Dickie he
was now; but it was not so difficult as you might suppose. It was no
harder than not talking about the dreams you had last night.

And now he had indeed a full life: head-work, bodily exercises, work,
home life, and joyous hours of play with two children who understood
play as the poor little, dirty Deptford children do not and cannot
understand it.

He lived and learned, and felt more and more that this was the life to
which he really belonged. And days and weeks and months went by and
nothing happened, and that is the happiest thing that can happen to any
one who is already happy.

Then one night the nurse said--

"I have asked. You are to bury your treasure under the window of the
solar parlor, and lie down and sleep on it. You'll take no harm, and
when you're asleep I will say the right words, and you'll wake under the
same skies and not under a built house, like as you feared."

She wrapped him in a warm cloth mantle of her own, when she took him
from his bed that night after all the family were asleep, and put on his
shoes and led him to the hole she had secretly dug in below the window.
They had put his embroidered leather bag of gold in a little
wrought-iron coffer that Sebastian had given him, and the nurse had
tightly fastened the join of lid and box with wax and resin. The box was
wrapped in a silk scarf, and the whole packet put into a big earthenware
jar with a lid, and the join of lid and jar was smeared with resin and
covered with clay. The nurse had shown him how to do all this.

"Against the earth spirits and the three hundred years," she said.

Now she lifted the jar into the hole, and together they filled the hole
with earth, treading it in with their feet.

"And when you would return," said the nurse, "you know the way."

"Do I?"

"You lay the rattle, the seal, and the moon-seeds as before, and listen
to the voices."

And then Dickie lay down in the cloth cloak, and the nurse sat by him
and held his hand till he fell asleep. It was June now, and the scent of
the roses was very sweet, and the nightingales kept him awake awhile.
But the sky overhead was an old friend of his, and as he lay he could
see the shini