"'ELFRIDA!' SAID BOTH BOYS AT ONCE"
"Oh!" he gasped, and Dickie, looking up, whispered, "It's all up—run. Never mind me. I shall get away all right."
"No," said Edred, and then with a joyous leap of the heart perceived that the dark figure was Elfrida in her father's ulster.
("I hadn't time to put on my stockings," she explained later. "You'd have known me a mile off by my white legs if I hadn't covered them up with this.")
"Elfrida!" said both boys at once.
"Well, you didn't think I was going to be out of it," she said. "I've been behind you all the way, Edred. Don't tell me anything. I won't ask any questions, only come along out of it. Lean on me."
They got him up to the passage, one on each side, and by that time Dickie could use his legs and his crutch. They got home and roused Lord Arden, and told him Dickie was found and all about it, and he roused the house, and he and Beale and half-a-dozen men from the village went up to the cave and found that wicked man and woman in a stupid sleep, and tied their hands and marched them to the town and to the police-station.
When the man was searched the letter was found on him which the man—it was that redheaded man you have heard of—had taken from Talbot Court.
"I wish you joy of your good fortune, my boy," said Lord Arden when he had read the letter. "Of course we must look into things, but I feel no doubt at all that you are Lord Arden!"
"I don't want to be," said Dickie, and that was true. Yet at the same time he did want to be. The thought of being Richard, Lord Arden, he who had been just little lame Dickie of Deptford, of owning this glorious castle, of being the master of an old name and an old place, this thought sang in his heart a very beautiful tune. Yet what he said was true. There is so often room in our hearts for two tunes at a time. "I don't want to be. You ought to be, sir. You've been so kind to me," he said.