“Aw, say, you ain’t goin’ to take ’em along, are you?” demanded one knight, below his voice. “They’ll spoil everythin’.”
“You’re rescuin’ ’em, you geezer,” the New Boy explained. “You got to have ’em along till you get ’em rescued, ain’t you? Arrest that man!” he added. “Put him in double irons with chains and balls on. And gag him, to make sure.”
And it was done, with hardly a moment’s loss of time.
We went round by the walk—a course to which the arrested one had time to refer in further support of his claim as to our undesirability. But he was drowned in the important topics that were afoot: the new cave to be explored where the Branchetts were putting a cellar under the dining-room, mysterious boxes suspected to contain dynamite being unloaded into the Wells’s cellar, and the Court of the Seven Kings, to which, it seemed, we were being conveyed in the red barn.
“Shall we give ’em the password?” the New Boy asked, sotto voce, as we approached the rendezvous. And Mary Elizabeth and I trembled as we realized that he was thinking of sharing the password with us.
“Naw!” cried the Arrested One violently. “It’ll be all over town.”
The New Boy drew himself up—he must have been good to look at, for I recall his compact little figure and his pink cheeks.
“Can’t you tell when you’re gagged?” he inquired with majesty. “You’re playin’ like a girl yourself. I can give the password for ’em, though,” he added reasonably. So we all filed in the red barn, to the Court of the Seven Kings, and each boy whispered the password into the first manger, but Mary Elizabeth and I had it whispered for us.
What the Court of the Seven Kings might have held for us we were never to know. At that instant there appeared lumbering down the alley a load of hay. Seated in the midst was a small figure whom we recognized as Stitchy Branchett; and he rose and uttered a roar.
“Come on, fellows!” he said. “We dast ride over to the Glen. I was lookin’ for you. Father said so.” And Stitchy threw himself on his back, and lifted and waved his heels.