played hide-and-seek, and they ran races. He preferred play to talk just then; he did not want to let out the fact that he remembered nothing whatever of the doings of the last month. Elfrida did not seem very anxious to talk, either. The garden was most interesting, and the only blot on the scene was the black figure of the tutor walking up and down with a sour face and his thumbs in one of his dull-looking books.
The children sat down on the step of one of the stone seats, and Dickie was wondering why he had felt that queer clock-stopping feeling, when he was roused from his wonderings by hearing Elfrida say—
"Please to remember
The Fifth of November,
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot."
"How odd!" he thought. "I didn't know that was so old as all this." And he remembered hearing his father, Sir Richard Arden, say, "Treason's a dangerous word to let lie on your lips these days." So he said—
"'Tis not a merry song, cousin, nor a safe one. 'Tis best not to sing of treason."
"But it didn't come off, you know, and he's always burnt in the end."
So already Guy Fawkes burnings went on. Dickie wondered whether there would be a bon-
