away. Robert lost consciousness for an instant. When he opened his eyes the others were crowding around him.

“We never heard you come in,” they said. “How awfully jolly of you to wish it to give us our wish!”

“Of course we understood that was what you’d done.”

“But you ought to have told us. Suppose we’d wished something silly.”

“Silly?” said Robert, very crossly indeed. “How much sillier could you have been, I’d like to know? You nearly settled me—I can tell you.”

Then he told his story, and the others admitted that it certainly had been rough on him. But they praised his courage and cleverness so much that he presently got back his lost temper, and felt braver than ever, and consented to be captain of the besieged force.

“Oh, do! do! do! do! do!” said Robert

“We haven’t done anything yet,” said Anthea comfortably; “we waited for you. We’re going to shoot at them through these little loopholes with the bow and arrows uncle gave you, and you shall have first shot.”

“I don’t think I would,” said Robert cautiously; “you don’t know what they’re like near to. They’ve got real bows and arrows—an awful length—and swords and pikes and daggers, and all sorts of sharp things. They’re all quite, quite real. It’s not just a—a picture, or a vision, or anything; they can hurt us—or kill us even, I shouldn’t wonder. I can feel my ear all sore still. Look here—have you explored the castle? Because I think we’d better let them alone as long as they let us alone. I heard that Jakin man say they weren’t going to attack till just before sundown. We can be getting ready for the attack. Are there any soldiers in the castle to defend it?”

“We don’t know,” said Cyril. “You see, directly I’d wished we were in a besieged castle, everything seemed to go upside down, and when it came straight we looked out of the window, and saw the camp and things and you—and of course we kept on looking at everything. Isn’t this room jolly? It’s as real as real!”

It was. It was square, with stone walls four feet thick, and great beams for ceiling. A low door at the corner led to a flight of steps, up and down. The children went down; they found themselves in a great arched gatehouse—the enormous doors were shut and barred. There was a window in a little room at the bottom of the round turret up which the stair wound, rather larger than the other windows, and looking through it they saw that the drawbridge was up and the portcullisbb down; the moat looked very wide and deep. Opposite the great door that led to the moat was another great door, with a little door in it. The children went through this, and found themselves in a big paved courtyard, with the great grey walls of the castle rising dark and heavy on all four sides.

Near the middle of the courtyard stood Martha, moving her right hand backwards and forwards in the air. The cook was stooping down and moving her hands, also in a very curious way. But the oddest and at the same time most terrible thing was the Lamb, who was sitting on nothing, about three feet from the ground, laughing happily.

The children ran towards him. Just as Anthea was reaching out her arms to take him, Martha said crossly, “Let him alone—do, miss, when he is good.”

“But what’s he doing?” said Anthea.

“Doing? Why, a-setting in his high chair as good as gold, a precious, watching me doing of the ironing. Get along with you, do—my iron’s cold again.”

She went towards the cook, and seemed to poke an invisible fire with an unseen poker—the cook seemed to be putting an unseen dish into an invisible oven.

“Run along with you, do,” she said; “I’m behind-hand as it is. You won’t get no dinner if you come a-hindering of me like this. Come, off you goes, or I’ll pin a dishcloth to some of your tails.”

“You’re sure the Lamb’s all right?” asked Jane anxiously.

“Right as ninepence, if you don’t come unsettling of him. I thought you’d like to be rid of him for today; but take him, if you want him, for gracious’ sake.”

“No, no,” they said, and hastened away. They would have to defend the castle presently, and the Lamb was safer even suspended in mid-air in an invisible kitchen than in the guardroom of a besieged castle. They went through the first