fight again."

'"Who made thee a Lawgiver in England?" said Elias. "I know this people.
Let the dogs tear one another! I will lend the King ten thousand pieces of
gold, and he can fight the Barons at his pleasure."

'"There are not two thousand pieces of gold in all England this summer," I
said, for I kept the accounts, and I knew how the earth's gold moved--that
wonderful underground river! Elias barred home the windows, and, his hands
about his mouth, he told me how, when he was trading with small wares in a
French ship, he had come to the Castle of Pevensey.'

'Oh!' said Dan. 'Pevensey again!' and looked at Una, who nodded and
skipped.

'There, after they had scattered his pack up and down the Great Hall, some
young knights carried him to an upper room, and dropped him into a well in
a wall, that rose and fell with the tide. They called him Joseph, and
threw torches at his wet head. Why not?'

'Why, of course,' cried Dan. 'Didn't you know it was----' Puck held up his
hand to stop him, and Kadmiel, who never noticed, went on.

'When the tide dropped he thought he stood on old armour, but feeling with
his toes, he raked up bar on bar of soft gold. Some wicked treasure of the
old days put away, and the secret cut off by the sword. I have heard the
like before.'

'So have we,' Una whispered. 'But it wasn't wicked a bit.'

'Elias took a morsel of the stuff with him, and thrice yearly he would
return to Pevensey as a chapman, selling at no price or profit, till they
suffered him to sleep in the empty room, where he would plumb and grope,
and steal away a few bars. The great store of it still remained, and by
long brooding he had come to look on it as his own. Yet when we thought
how we should lift and convey it, we saw no way. This was before the Word
of the Lord had come to me. A walled fortress possessed by Normans; in the
midst a forty-foot tide-well out of which to remove secretly many
horse-loads of gold! Hopeless! So Elias wept. Adah, his wife, wept too.
She had hoped to stand beside the Queen's Christian tiring-maids at Court,
when the King should give them that place at Court which he had promised.
Why not? She was born in England--an odious woman.

'The present evil to us was that Elias, out of his strong folly, had, as
it were, promised the King that he would arm him with more gold. Wherefore
the King in his camp stopped his ears against the Barons and the people.
Wherefore men died daily. Adah so desire