Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/293

Rh And nobody, except perhaps Elfrida, ever understood what it had cost Edred to go that night through the dark and rescue his cousin.

Edred's father and Mrs. Honeysett agreed that Edred had done it in the delirium of a fever, brought on by his anxiety about his friend and playmate. People do, you know, do odd things in fevers that they would never do at other times.

The red-headed man and the woman were tried at the assizes and punished. If you ask me how they knew about the caves which none of the country people seemed to know of, I can only answer that I don't know. Only I know that every one you know knows lots of things that you don't know they know.

When they all went a week later to explore the caves, they found a curious arrangement of brickwork and cement and clay, shutting up a hole through which the stream had evidently once flowed out into the open air. It now flowed away into darkness. Lord Arden pointed out how its course had been diverted and made to run down underground to the sea.

"We might let it come back to the moat," said Edred. "It used to run that way. It says so in the 'History of Arden.'"

"We must decide that later," said his father, who had a long blue lawyer's letter in his pocket.