s comfortingly round him. 'I've been looking for you all night. I
went to say good-bye to you yesterday--Oh, Quentin--and I found you'd
run away. How _could_ you?'

'I'm sorry,' said Quentin, 'if it worried you, I'm sorry. Very, very. I
was going to telegraph to-day.'

'But where have you been? What have you been doing all night?' she
asked, caressing him.

'Is it only one night?' said Quentin. 'I don't know exactly what's
happened. It was accidental magic, I think, mother. I'm glad I thought
of the right word to get back, though.' And then he told her all about
it. She held him very tightly and let him talk.

Perhaps she thought that a little boy to whom accidental magic happened
all in a minute, like that, was not exactly the right little boy for
that excellent school in Salisbury. Anyhow she took him to Egypt with
her to meet his father, and, on the way, they happened to see a doctor
in London who said: 'Nerves' which is a poor name for accidental magic,
and Quentin does not believe it means the same thing at all.

Quentin's father is well now, and he has left the army, and father and
mother and Quentin live in a jolly, little, old house in Salisbury, and
Quentin is a 'day boy' at that very same school. He and Smithson minor
are the greatest of friends. But he has never told Smithson minor about
the accidental magic. He has learned now, and learned very thoroughly,
that it is not always wise to tell all you know. If he had not owned
that he knew that it was the Stonehenge altar stone!

* * * * *

You may think that the accidental magic was all a dream, and that
Quentin dreamed it because his mother had told him so much about
Atlantis. But then, how do you account for his dreaming so much that his
mother had never told him? You think that that part wasn't true, well,
it may have been true for anything I know. And I am sure you don't know
more about it than I do.

IV

THE PRINCESS AND THE HEDGE-PIG

'But I don't see what we're to _do_' said the Queen for the twentieth
time.

'Whatever we do will end in misfortune,' said the King gloomily; 'you'll
see it will.'

They were sitting in the honeysuckle arbour talking things over, while
the nurse walked up and down the terrace with the new baby in her arms.

'Yes, dear,' said the poor Queen; 'I've not the slightest doubt I
shall.'

Misfortune comes in many ways, and you can't always know beforehand that
a certain way