an."

Dickie could; and when they made their evening camp in a deep gully soft
with beech-leaves, and he looked out over the ridge--cautiously, because
of keepers--at the smoothness of a mighty slope, green-gray in the dusk,
where rabbits frisked and played, he was glad that he had not yielded to
his tiredness and stopped to rest the night anywhere else. Chevering
Park is a very beautiful place, I would have you to know. And the
travellers were lucky. The dogs were good and quiet, and no keeper
disturbed their rest or their masters. Dickie slept with True in his
arms, and it was like a draught of soft magic elixir to lie once more in
the still, cool night and look up at the stars through the trees.

"Can't think why they ever invented houses," he said, and then he fell
asleep.

By short stages, enjoying every step of every day's journey, they went
slowly and at their ease through the garden-land of Kent. Dickie loved
every minute of it, every leaf in the hedge, every blade of grass by the
roadside. And most of all he loved the quiet nights when he fell asleep
under the stars with True in his arms.

It was all good, all.... And it was worth waiting and working for seven
long months, to feel the thrill that Dickie felt when Beale, as they
topped a ridge of the great South Downs, said suddenly, "There's the
sea," and, a dozen yards further on, "There's Arden Castle."

There it lay, gray and green, with its old stones and ivy--the same
Castle which Dickie had seen on the day when they lay among the furze
bushes and waited to burgle Talbot Court. There were red roofs at one
side of the Castle where a house had been built among the ruins. As they
drew nearer, and looked down at Arden Castle, Dickie saw two little
figures in its green courtyard, and wondered whether they could possibly
be Edred and Elfrida, the little cousins whom he had met in King James
the First's time, and who, the nurse said, really belonged to the times
of King Edward the Seventh, or Nowadays, just as he did himself. It
seemed as though it could hardly be true; but, if it were true, how
splendid! What games he and they could have! And what a play-place it
was that spread out before him--green and glorious, with the sea on one
side and the downs on the other, and in the middle the ruins of Arden
Castle.

But as they went on through the furze bushes Dickie perceived that Mr.
Beale was growing more and more silent and uneasy.

"What's up?" Dickie as