followed, not so fast. She was looking at the barn and thinking what sort of story she could make to fit it. It was built of rough grey stones, and she could see a big dark doorway and stone steps outside the wall going up to a smaller doorway above. The doors seemed to have gone. The place must at one time have been used for something or other, but now it was falling into ruin.
The barn stood on the top of a ridge of hill coming down from the fells towards the lake. There was a shout from Dick. He beckoned to her with his telescope and stood there, beside the barn, looking down at the country on the other side of the ridge. In a few moments Dorothea stood beside him. Now for the first time they saw the great ring of hills above the head of the lake. There was the lake, like a wide river. There were a group of islands, and a cloud of smoke above the village. Then, nearer to them, just below the barn, was a little frozen tarn, cupped in a shallow hollow in the side of the hill. Beyond it to the right, woods climbed the hill-side. Below them they could see woods going down to the lake, and beyond the woods they caught glimpses of the main road between the fields. And down there, between the road and the lake, was a white farm-house and some out-buildings, not far above what seemed to be a narrow bay.
“Dot,” said Dick. “I bet that’s the farm-house where those children are staying, the ones Mrs Dixon knew about.”
“Bother them,” said Dorothea. She had been meaning to think of something else. But if Dick remembered them, when his mind was full of stones and stars, how could she possibly forget them?
“Bother them,” she said again. “What about your observatory?”
“You can see any amount of sky from up here,” said Dick. “And we can have a light in the barn for looking at the maps of the stars by.”
“It’ll be pretty cold,” said Dorothea.
But in the angle between the solid stone steps and the wall they found the remains of a fire, charred sticks, and a few stones to keep the fire in place. Someone had felt cold up there before them.
“What about that?” said Dick.
The barn itself was quite empty, and they decided that they could keep their firewood inside it. They climbed the stone steps. Nothing but the rusty hinges was left of the door that had been at the top of them. Gingerly, pressing with each foot before properly stepping on it, they went in. There were holes in the floor and the old planking creaked beneath them. They picked their way towards a big square opening in the end wall, through which, as it came right down to the level of the floor, they supposed bracken or hay had been pitched from a cart standing below.
“What a place to look out from,” said Dick. “And for all the northern stars . . . I say, you can see that farm even better from up here.”
“Perhaps we wouldn’t like them if we knew them,” said Dorothea.
“Let’s go and get wood ready for the evening,” said Dick, “and see if the ice is bearing.”
They went down the steep slope to the tarn. Dick stepped with one foot on the ice at the edge of it. It sank beneath his foot, and water oozed up at the side of it. He threw a stone towards the middle, and it crashed through the ice into the water.
“No good yet,” he said. “But it soon will be.”
They walked round the tarn, gathered two big bundles of fallen sticks in the outskirts of the wood beyond it, carried them up to the barn and spent a long time breaking them up into short handy lengths and piling them neatly just inside.
“Everything’s ready now,” said Dick. “Let’s go down and get tea over.” They were on the point of starting down the track to Dixon’s Farm when they were reminded of those six strangers yet again.
“There’s that boat,” said Dick, taking a last look down at the lake with his telescope. “There, turning into that bay.”
For some minutes they watched, but most of the bay below the white farm-house was hidden by the pine trees on a little rocky headland. Then, suddenly, Dick spoke again. “Coming up the field,” he half whispered. “Just below the house. Waving at something . . . There’s the boat going away out of the bay. Only two in it. Both red caps . . . ”
Dorothea put a hand on the telescope for a moment and then remembered that she could never see through it.
“Where are they now?”
“Disappeared behind the house. Let’s go up into the observatory. Just for one minute.”
They ran up the steps and into the loft. Dick crouched on the floor by the big opening at the end of it and steadied his telescope against the wall.
“Dot,” he cried suddenly. “They do come from that house. Look at this end, two windows one above another. Two of them are hanging out of that top window.”
“What’s the good of thinking about them?” said Dorothea. “They might as well be in some different world.”
Dick started so sharply that he almost dropped his telescope.
“Why not? Why not?” he said. “All the better. Just wait till dark and we can try signalling to Mars.”
“To Mars?” said Dorothea.
“Why not?” said Dick. “Of course they may not see it. And even if they do see it they may not understand. A different world. That makes it all the more like signalling to Mars.”
“We’re going to be late for Mrs Dixon’s tea,” said Dorothea, and a moment later they were down those steep stone steps and hurrying home. As she ran down the cart track beside him, Dorothea was thinking. You never knew with Dick. He always seemed to be bothering about birds, or stars, or engines, or fossils and things like that. He never was able to make up stories like those that came so easily to her, and yet, sometimes, in some queer way of his own, he seemed to hit on things that made stories and real life come closer together than usual.
“It’s worth trying,” she panted, just as they were coming to the gate into the main road.
“What is?” said Dick, who was already thinking of quite other stars. What constellations could they look for? He wished he could keep the star map in his head. But anyway, they would take the book with them, and have a lantern to read it by, in case the firelight was too flickery.
“Signalling to Mars,” said Dorothea.
CHAPTER II
SIGNALLING TO MARS
AN HOUR LATER they were climbing the cart track again. Dick had the star-book with him, and the telescope. Dorothea was carrying the lantern.
Mrs Dixon had made no fuss at all about letting them have a lantern when they asked for it, though what they could want with going up to the old barn after sunset was more than she could tell. Stars? Couldn’t they see stars as well and better from the farmyard, or from the scullery window for that, and keep warm into the bargain?
“You must have an observatory on the top of a hill,” Dick had explained, “so as to get a larger horizon.”
“Get along with you, you and your horizons,” Mrs Dixon had laughed, shaking the
