something
yet to do."

And when the soldiers had gone to get food and strew it about, as they
had been told to do, Dickie crept up to the stones that had been
removed, from which he had never taken his eyes, knelt down and
scratched on one of the stones with one of the big nails he had brought
in his hand. It blunted over and he took another, hiding in the chapel
doorway when the men came back with the food.

"Every man to his post and God save us all!" cried the captain when the
food was spread. They clattered off--they were in their armor now--and
Dickie knelt down again and went on scratching with the nail.

The air was full of shouting, and the sound of guns, and the clash of
armor, and a shattering sound like a giant mallet striking a giant
drum--a sound that came and came again at five-minute intervals--and the
shrieks of wounded men. Dickie pressed up the grass to cover the marks
he had made on the stone, so low as to be almost underground and quite
hidden by the grass roots.

Then he brushed the stone dust from his hands and stood up.

The treasure was found and its hiding-place marked. Now he would find
Edred and Elfrida, and they would go back. Whether he was Lord of Arden
or no, it was he and no other who had restored the fallen fortunes of
that noble house.

He turned to go the way his cousins had gone. He could see the
men-at-arms crowding in the archway of the great gate tower. From a
window to his right a lady leaned, pale with terror, and with her were
Edred and Elfrida--he could just see their white faces. He made for the
door below that window. But it was too late. That dull, thudding sound
came again, and this time it was followed by a great crash and a great
shouting. The blue sky showed through the archway where the tall gates
had been and under the arch was a mass of men shouting, screaming,
struggling, and the gleam of steel and the scarlet of brave blood.

Dickie forgot all about the door below the window, forgot all about his
cousins, forgot that he had found the treasure and that it was now his
business to get himself and the others safely back to their own times.
He only saw the house he loved broken into by men he hated; he saw the
men he loved spending their blood like water to defend that house.

He drew the little sword that hung at his side and shouting "An Arden!
an Arden!" he rushed towards the swaying, staggering _melee_. He reached
it just as the leader of the attacking part