ee Cecil, anyhow. I told you she won't allow any one in."

"Why does your mother give Cecil a room whose window looks over the
moat, if it's so important she should hide?" I persisted.

"All the rooms in that wing where we live are like that," Bertie
explained. "They've windows on the little court inside, and windows
outside, on the moat. But the outside window in Cecil's room is nailed
shut now, so she couldn't open it if she tried. And those little old
panes set in lead are thick as _thick_! I don't believe you could smash
one unless you had a hammer. Father says you couldn't. I mean, he says
_Cecil_ couldn't. And since the day Mother scolded Cecil for looking
out, the curtain's nailed down. It doesn't matter, though. Plenty of
light comes from the garden side."

"Where was Cecil before you went to live in the wing?" I asked. "Was she
in the house?"

"Oh, she'd been in that wing for weeks before Father and I moved in,"
said the boy. "Mother slept there at night. And Cecil could look out as
much as she liked, because there was no one about except us, and
Krammie. Krammie doesn't count! She's the same as the family, because
she's so old--she nursed Mother when Mother was a baby. Seems funny she
_could_ have been a baby, doesn't it? But Krammie loves her better than
any one, except me. She never splits on me to them if I do anything. But
now I've eaten all the cakes, so we'd better go and find Krammie. If we
don't, she may go into the wing first. There'd be the _devil_ to pay
then!"

It seemed to me that there was the devil to pay already--a devil in
woman's form--unless my imagination had made a fool of me. I shivered
with disgust at the thought of those two witches--the middle-aged one
and the hag. I hope I didn't take their wickedness for granted because
they were both _Germans_, though we have got into that habit in the last
five years, with all we've gone through, and with the villains who used
to be Russian in novels now being German!

If I did hand over my prize to the elder witch, the boy was lost to me.
I should never get a second chance to catch my fox with cake! And even
were I sure that he wouldn't blab, or that Kramm wouldn't, the secret of
our meeting was certain to leak out. In that case, the red baize door
would never again open to my knock. So what was I to do?

"Come along," urged the boy. Having got all he could get out of me, he
began to sulk. "I don't want to stay with you any more."

"Wait