keep off foreign foes and guard the country round about it. But of all its old splendour there is now nothing but the great walls that the grasses and wild flowers grow on, and round towers whose floors and ceilings have fallen away, and roofless chambers where owls build, and brambles and green ferns grow strong and thick.
The children walked to the castle along the cliff path where the skylarks were singing like mad up in the pale sky, and the bean-fields, where the bees were busy, gave out the sweetest scent in the world – a scent that got itself mixed with the scent of the brown seaweed that rises and falls in the wash of the tide on the rocks at the cliff-foot.
‘Let’s have dinner here,’ said Elfrida, when they reached the top of a little mound from which they could look down on the castle. So they had it.
Two bites of sandwich and one of peppermint cream; that was the rule.
And all the time they were munching they looked down on the castle, and loved it more and more.
‘Don’t you wish it was real, and we lived in it?’ Elfrida asked, when they had eaten as much as they wanted – not of peppermint creams, of course; but they had finished them.
‘It is real, what there is of it.’
‘Yes; but I mean if it was a house with chimneys, and fireplaces, and doors with bolts, and glass in the windows.’
‘I wonder if we could get in?’ said Edred.
‘We might climb over,’ said Elfrida, looking hopefully at the enormous walls, sixty feet high, in which no gate or gap showed.
‘There’s an old man going across that field no, not that one; the very green field. Let’s ask him.’
So they left their satchels lying on the short turf, that was half wild thyme, and went down. But they were not quite quick enough; before they could get to him the old man had come through the field of young corn, clambered over a stile, and vanished between the high hedges of a deep-sunk lane. So over the stile and down into the lane went the children, and caught up with the old man just as he had clicked his garden gate behind him and had turned to go up the bricked path between beds of woodruff, and anemones, and narcissus, and tulips of all colours.
His back was towards them. Now it is very difficult to address a back politely. So you will not be surprised to learn that Edred said, ‘Hi!’ and Elfrida said, ‘Halloa! I say!’
The old man turned and saw at his gate two small figures dressed in what is known as sailor costume. They saw a very wrinkled old face with snowy hair and mutton-chop whiskers of a silvery whiteness. There were very bright twinkling blue eyes in the sun-browned face, and on the clean-shaven mouth a kind, if tight, smile.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘and what do you want?’
‘We want to know—’ said Elfrida.
‘About the castle,’ said Edred, ‘Can we get in and look at it?’
‘I’ve got the keys,’ said the old man, and put his hand in at his door and reached them from a nail.
‘I s’pose no one lives there?’ said Elfrida.
‘Not now,’ said the old man, coming back along the garden path. ‘Lord Arden, he died a fortnight ago come Tuesday, and the place is shut up till the new lord’s found.’
‘I wish I was the new lord,’ said Edred, as they followed the old man along the lane.
‘An’ how old might you be?’ the old man asked.
‘I’m ten nearly. It’s my birthday tomorrow,’ said Edred. ‘How old are you?’
‘Getting on for eighty. I’ve seen a deal in my time. If you was the young lord you’d have a chance none of the rest of them ever had – you being the age you are.’
‘What sort of chance?’
‘Why,’ said the old man, ‘don’t you know the saying? I thought everyone knowed it hereabouts.’
‘What saying?’
‘I ain’t got the wind for saying and walking too,’ said the old man, and stopped; ‘leastways, not potery.’ He drew a deep breath and said:
‘When Arden’s lord still lacketh ten
And may not see his nine again,
Let Arden stand as Arden may
On Arden Knoll at death of day.
If he have skill to say the spell
He shall find the treasure, and all be well!’
‘I say!’ said both the children. ‘And where’s Arden Knoll?’ Edred asked.
‘Up yonder.’ He pointed to the mound where they had had lunch.
Elfrida inquired, ‘What treasure?’
But that question was not answered – then.
‘If I’m to talk I must set me down,’ said the old man. ‘Shall we set down here, or set down inside of the castle?’
Two curiosities struggled, and the stronger won. ‘In the castle,’ said the children.
So it was in the castle, on a pillar fallen from one of the chapel arches, that the old man sat down and waited. When the children had run up and down the grassy enclosure, peeped into the ruined chambers, picked their way along the ruined colonnade, and climbed the steps of the only tower that they could find with steps to climb, then they came and sat beside the old man on the grass that was white with daisies, and said, ‘Now, then!’
‘Well, then,’ said the old man, ‘you see the Ardens was always great gentry. I’ve heard say there’s always been Ardens here since before William the Conker, whoever he was.’
‘Ten-sixty-six,’ said Edred to himself.
‘An’ they had their ups and downs like other folks, great and small. And once, when there was a war or trouble of some sort abroad, there was a lot of money, and jewelery, and silver plate hidden away. That’s what it means by treasure. And the men who hid it got killed – ah, them was unsafe times to be alive in, I tell you – and nobody never knew where the treasure was hid.’
‘Did they ever find it?’
‘Ain’t I telling you? An’ a wise woman that lived in them old ancient times, they went to her to ask her what to do to find the treasure, and she had a fit directly, what you’d call a historical fit nowadays. She never said nothing worth hearing without she was in a fit, and she made up the saying all in potery whilst she was in her fit, and that was all they could get out of her. And she never would say what the spell was. Only when she was a-dying, Lady Arden, that was then, was very took up with nursing of her, and before she breathed her lastest she told Lady Arden the spell.’ He stopped for lack of breath.
‘And what is the spell?’ said the children, much more breathless than he.
‘Nobody knows,’ said
