“How dreadful!” breathed Elfrida. “Did they get it back?”
“Never. And never a word was ever found out about who took it, or why, or where they took it to. Only a week or two after Mr. Frewin was killed in the hunting-field, and as they picked him up he said, ‘Elfrida; tell Elfrida——’ and he was trying to say what they was to tell her, when he died. Some folks hold as ’twas him stole the baby, to be even with her for jilting of him, or else to pretend to find it and get her to marry him out of gratitude. But no one’ll ever know. And the baby’s mother, she wore away bit by bit, to a shadow, and then she died, and after that the East House was shut up for good and all, to fall into rot and ruin like it is now. Don’t you cry, missie. I know’d you wouldn’t like the story, but you would have it; but don’t you cry. It’s all long ago, and she and her baby and her young husband’s all been happy together in heaven this long time now, I lay.”
“I do like the story,” said Elfrida, gulping, “but it is sad, isn’t it?”
“Thank you for telling it,” Edred said; “but I don’t think it’s any good, really, being unhappy about things that are so long ago, and all over and done with.”
“I wish we could go back into the past and find the baby for her,” Elfrida whispered—and Edred whispered back—
“It’s the treasure we’ve got to find. Excuse our whispering, Mr. Beale. Thank you for the story—oh, and I wanted to ask you who owns the land now—all the land about here, I mean, that used to belong to us Ardens?”
“That Jackson chap,” said old Beale, “him that made a fortune in the soap boiling. The Tallow King, they call him. But he’s got too rich for the house he’s got. He’s bought a bigger place in Yorkshire, that used to belong to the Duke of Sanderstead, and the Arden lands are to be sold next year, so I’m told.”
“Oh,” said Edred, clasping his hands, “if we could only find the treasure, and buy back the land! We haven’t forgotten what we said the first time: if we found the treasure we’d make all the cottages comfortable, and new thatch everywhere.”
“That’s a good lad,” said old Beale, “you make haste and find the treasure. And if you don’t find it, never fret; there’s ways of helping other folks without finding of treasure, so there is. You come and see old Beale again, my lord, and I shouldn’t wonder but what I’d have a white rabbit for you next time you come along this way.”
“He is an old dear,” said Elfrida, as they went home, “and I do think the films will be dry by the time we get back; but perhaps we’d better not print them till to-morrow morning.”