on, don’t be a little duffer.” (He may have said, “a couple of little duffers.”) “Who is it, and what’s it all about?”

“I can’t possibly tell you,” Gerald panted.

“We shall have to see about that, shan’t we,” said the newcomer amiably. “Come out into the moonlight and let’s review the situation.”

Gerald, even in that topsy-turvy state of his world, found time to think that a gamekeeper who used such words as that had most likely a romantic past. But at the same time he saw that such a man would be far less easy to “square” with an unconvincing tale than Eliza, or Johnson, or even Mademoiselle. In fact, he seemed, with the only tale that they had to tell, practically unsquarable.

Gerald got up—if he was not up already, or still up—and pulled at the limp and now hot hand of the sobbing Mabel; and as he did so the unsquarable one took his hand, and thus led both children out from under the shadow of Flora’s dome into the bright white moonlight that carpeted Flora’s steps. Here he sat down, a child on each side of him, drew a hand of each through his velveteen arm, pressed them to his velveteen sides in a friendly, reassuring way, and said: “Now then! Go ahead!”

Mabel merely sobbed. We must excuse her. She had been very brave, and I have no doubt that all heroines, from Joan of Arc to Grace Darling, have had their sobbing moments.7

But Gerald said: “It’s no use. If I made up a story you’d see through it.”

“That’s a compliment to my discernment, anyhow,” said the stranger. “What price telling me the truth?”

“If we told you the truth,” said Gerald, “you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Try me,” said the velveteen one. He was clean-shaven, and had large eyes that sparkled when the moonlight touched them.

“I can’t,” said Gerald, and it was plain that he spoke the truth. “You’d either think we were mad, and get us shut up, or else—oh, it’s no good. Thank you for helping us, and do let us go home.”

“I wonder,” said the stranger musingly, “whether you have any imagination.”

“Considering that we invented them,” Gerald hotly began, and stopped with late prudence.

“If by ‘them’ you mean the people whom I helped you to imprison in yonder tomb,” said the Stranger, loosing Mabel’s hand to put his arm round her, “remember that I saw and heard them. And with all respect to your imagination, I doubt whether any invention of yours would be quite so convincing.”

Gerald put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

“Collect yourself,” said the one in velveteen; “and while you are collecting, let me just put the thing from my point of view. I think you hardly realize my position. I come down from London to take care of a big estate.”

“I thought you were a gamekeeper,” put in Gerald.

Mabel put her head on the stranger’s shoulder. “Hero in disguise, then, I know,” she sniffed.

“Not at all,” said he; “bailiff would be nearer the mark. On the very first evening I go out to take the moonlit air, and approaching a white building, hear sounds of an agitated scuffle, accompanied by frenzied appeals for assistance. Carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, I do assist and shut up goodness knows who behind a stone door. Now, is it unreasonable that I should ask who it is that I’ve shut up—helped to shut up, I mean, and who it is that I’ve assisted?”

“It’s reasonable enough,” Gerald admitted.

“Well then,” said the stranger.

“Well then,” said Gerald, “the fact is—No,” he added after a pause, “the fact is, I simply can’t tell you.”

“Then I must ask the other side,” said Velveteens. “Let me go—I’ll undo that door and find out for myself.”

“Tell him,” said Mabel, speaking for the first time. “Never mind if he believes or not. We can’t have them let out.”

“Very well,” said Gerald, “I’ll tell him. Now look here, Mr. Bailiff, will you promise us on an English gentleman’s word of honour—because, of course, I can see you’re that, bailiff or not—will you promise that you won’t tell any one what we tell you and that you won’t have us put in a lunatic asylum, however mad we sound?”

“Yes,” said the stranger, “I think I can promise that. But if you’ve been having a sham fight or anything and shoved the other side into that hole, don’t you think you’d better let them out? They’ll be most awfully frightened, you