and cloak and conspiracy—"you might at least make the trial."
"Very well, I will," said Elfrida abruptly. "No, Edred, he has a right to hear. He's one of us. He won't give us away. Will you, Dickie dear."
"You know I won't," Dickie assured her.
"Well, then," said Elfrida slowly, "we are . . . You listen hard and believe with both hands and with all your might, or you won't be able to believe at all. We are not what we seem, Edred and I. We don't really belong here at all. I don't know what's become of the real Elfrida and Edred who belong to this time. Haven't we seemed odd to you at all? Different, I mean, from the Edred and Elfrida you've been used to?"
The remembrance of the stopped-clock feeling came strongly on Dickie and he nodded.
"Well, that's because we're not them. We don't belong here. We belong three hundred years later in history. Only we've got a charm—because in our time Edred is Lord Arden, and there's a white mole who helps us, and we can go anywhere in history we like."
"Not quite," said Edred.
"No; but there are chests of different clothes, and whatever clothes we put on we come to that time in history. I know it sounds like silly untruths," she added rather sadly, "and I knew you wouldn't believe it, but it is true. And now we're going back to our times—Queen Alexandra, you know, and King Edward the
