rabbits or the like. Not but
what I liked it well enough where I was bred. I didn't tell you, did I,
we passed close longside our old 'ome that time we slep' among the furze
bushes? I don't s'pose my father's alive now. But 'e was a game old
chap--shouldn't wonder but what he'd stuck it out."

"Let's go and see him some day," said Dickie.

"I dunno," said Beale; "you see, I was allus a great hanxiety to 'im.
And besides, I shouldn't like to find 'im gone. Best not know nothing.
That's what I say."

But he sighed as he said it, and he filled his pipe in a thoughtful
silence.

CHAPTER VII

DICKIE LEARNS MANY THINGS

THAT night Dickie could not sleep. And as he lay awake a great resolve
grew strong within him. He would try once more the magic of the
moon-seeds and the rattle and the white seal, and try to get back into
that other world. So he crept down into the parlor where a little layer
of clear, red fire still burned.

And now the moon-seeds and the voices and the magic were over and Dickie
awoke, thrilled to feel how cleverly he had managed everything, moved
his legs in the bed, rejoicing that he was no longer lame. Then he
opened his eyes to feast them on the big, light tapestried room. But the
room was not tapestried. It was panelled. And it was rather dark. And it
was so small as not to be much better than a cupboard.

This surprised Dickie more than anything else that had ever happened to
him, and it frightened him a little too. If the spell of the moon-seeds
and the rattle and the white seal was not certain to take him where he
wished to be, nothing in the world was certain. He might be anywhere
where he didn't wish to be--he might be any one whom he did not wish to
be.

"I'll never try it again," he said: "if I get out of this I'll stick to
the wood-carving, and not go venturing about any more among dreams and
things."

He got up and looked out of a narrow window. From it he saw a garden,
but it was not a garden he had ever seen before. It had marble seats,
balustrades, and the damp dews of autumn hung chill about its almost
unleafed trees.

"It might have been worse; it might have been a prison yard," he told
himself. "Come, keep your heart up. Wherever I've come to it's an
adventure."

He turned back to the room and looked for his clothes. There were no
clothes there. But the shirt he had on was like the shirt he had slept
in at the beautiful house.

He turned to open the door, and