“How lovely!” said Elfrida. “I do wish Arden had a moat now.”
“If we found out where the water comes from,” said Edred practically, “we might get the moat back when we’d found the treasure.”
So when they had crossed the moat, and felt the frozen dew crackle under their feet as they trod the grass, they set out, before photographing the castle, to find out where the moat water came from.
The moat, they found, was fed by a stream that came across the field from Arden Knoll and entered the moat at the north-east corner, leaving it at the corner that was in the south-west. They followed the stream, and it was not till they had got quite into the middle of the field, and well away from the castle, that they saw how very beautiful the castle really was. It was quite perfect—no crumbled arches, no broken pillars, no shattered, battered walls.
“Oh,” said Edred, “how beautiful it is! How glad I am that we’ve got a castle like this!”
“Our castle isn’t like this,” said Elfrida.
“No; but it shall be, when we’ve found the treasure. You’ve got the two film rolls all right?”
“Yes,” said Elfrida, who had got them in a great unwieldy pocket that was hanging and banging against her legs under the full skirt. “Oh, look! Where’s the river? It stops short!”
It certainly seemed to. They were walking beside it, and it ran swiftly—looking like a steel-grey ribbon on the green cloth of the field—and half-way across the field it did stop short; there wasn’t any more of it—as though the ribbon had been snipped off by a giant pair of scissors, and the rest of it rolled up and put by safely somewhere out of the way.
“My hat!” said Edred; “it does stop short; and no mistake.” Curiosity pricked him, and he started running. They both ran. They ran to the spot where the giant scissors seemed to have snipped off the stream, and when they got there they found that the stream seemed to have got tired of running aboveground, and without any warning at all, any sloping of its bed, or any deepening of its banks, plunged straight down into the earth through a hole not eight feet across.