THE FINDING OF THE TREASURE
"To Richard Arden!" shouted the Mouldiwarp of Arden as it leaped on the
hour hand of the pearl and ivory clock. And then the hands went round
far too fast for speech to be possible. When the clock stopped, which it
did quite suddenly, Edred caught his breath and shouted, "To my daddy!"
at the top of his voice. And the hands began to move again so quickly
that neither of the children had time to see where they had stopped.
They just saw that they were in a room, and that the Mouldiwarp, who
seemed suddenly to have grown to the size of an enormous Polar bear,
leaned over the edge of the clock and caught at something with a paw a
foot long. And then some one called out something that they couldn't
hear, and almost at once the clock stopped, and they saw something climb
off the clock. And the clock was in the cave again. And there was Cousin
Richard in quite different clothes from those he had worn at King Henry
the Eighth's maying. They were the kind of clothes Edred had worn in
Boney's time, and the cave was just as it had been then, with kegs and
bales, and the stream running through it.
"You _must_ come with us," said the Mouldiwarp, slowly resuming its
ordinary size. "Don't you see? If these children let their father see
them, they'll have to explain the whole magic, and when once magic's
explained all the magic's gone, like the scent out of scent when you
leave the cork out of the bottle. But _you_ can see him and help--if he
wants help--without having to explain anything."
"All right," said Richard, and muttered something about "the Head of the
House." "Only," he added, "I dropped _my_ magic here." He stooped to the
sand and picked up a little stick with silver bells hung round it, like
the one that Folly carries at a carnival. "It's got the Arden arms and
crest on it," he said, pointing, and by the light of the pearl and ivory
clock the children could see the shield and the chequers and the
Mouldiwarp above. "Now I'm ready. Cousins, I take back everything I
said. You see, _my_ father's dead . . . and if I'd only had half your
chance. . . . That was what I thought. See? So give us your hand."
The hands were given.
"But oh," said Elfrida, "this is different from all the rest; that was a
game, and this is--this is----"
"This is real, my sock-lamb," said the Mouldiwarp, with unusual
kindness. "Now your Cousin Richard will help you, and when you get your
father back, as I make no doubts but what you will, then your Cousin
Dick he'll go back to his own time and generation, and be seen no more,
and your father won't never guess that you was there so close to him as
you will be."
"I don't believe we shall," said Elfrida, nodding stubbornly, and for
the first time in this story she did _not_ believe.
"Oh, well," said the Mouldiwarp bitterly, "of course if you don't
believe you'll find him, you'll not find him. That's plain as a currant
loaf."
"But _I_ believe we shall find him," said Edred, "and Elfrida's only a
girl. It might be only a dream, of course," he added thoughtfully.
"Don't you think I don't know that. But if it's a dream, I'm going to
stay in it. I'm not going back to Arden without my father."
"Do you understand," said the Mouldiwarp, "that if I take you into any
other time or place in your own century, it's the full stop? There isn't
any more."
"It means there's no chance of our getting into the past again, to look
for treasure or anything?"
"Oh, _chance_!" said the Mouldiwarp. "I mean no magic clock'll not never
be made for you no more, that's what I mean. And if you find your father
you'll not be Lord Arden any more, either!"
I hope it will not shock you very much when I tell you that at that
thought a distinct pang shot through Edred's breast. He really felt it,
in his flesh-and-blood breast, like a sharp knife. It was dreadful of
him to think of such a thing, when there was a chance of his getting his
daddy in exchange for just a title. It _was_ dreadful; but I am a
truthful writer, and I must own the truth. In one moment he felt the
most dreadful things--that it was all nonsense, and perhaps daddy wasn't
there, and it was no good looking for him any way, and he wanted to go
on being Lord Arden, and hadn't they better go home.
The thoughts came quite without his meaning them to, and Edred pushed
them from him with both hands, so to speak, hating himself because they
had come to him. And he will hate himself for those thoughts, though he
did not mean or wish to have them, as long as he lives, every time he
remembers them. That is the worst of thoughts, they live for ever.
"I don't want to be Lord Arden," was what he instantly said--"I want my
father." And what he said was true, in spite of those thoughts that he
didn't mean to have and can never forget.
"Shall I come along of you?" said the Mouldiwarp, and every one said
"Yes," very earnestly. A friendly Mouldiwarp is a very useful thing to
have at hand when you are going you don't know where.
"Now, you won't make any mistake," the mole went on. "This is the
wind-up and the end-all. So it is. No more chestses in atticses. No more
fine clotheses out of 'em neither. An' no more white clocks."
"All right," said Edred impatiently, "we understand. Now let's go."
"You wait a bit," said the Mouldiwarp aggravatingly. "You've got to
settle what you'll be, and what way your father'd better come out. _I_
think through the chink of the chalk."
"Any way you like," said Elfrida. "And Mouldiwarp, dear, shan't we ever
see _you_ again?"
"Oh, I don't say _that_," it said. "You'll see me at dinner every day."
"At dinner?"
"I'm on all the spoons and forks, anyhow," it said, and sniggered more
aggravatingly than ever.
"Mouldie!" cried Edred suddenly, "I've got it. You disguise us so that
father won't know us, and then we shan't be out of it all, whatever it
is."
"I think that's a first-rate idea," said Richard; "and me too."
"Not you," said the Mouldiwarp. But it waved a white paw at Edred and
Elfrida, and at once they found themselves dressed in tight-fitting
white fur dresses. Their hands even wore fat, white fur gloves with
tiger claws at the ends of the fingers. At the same moment the
Mouldiwarp grew big again--to the size of a very small Polar bear, while
Cousin Richard suddenly assumed the proportions of a giant.
"Now!" said the Mouldiwarp, and they all leaped on the white clock,
which started at once.
When it stopped, and they stepped off it, it was on to a carpet of thick
moss. Overhead, through the branches of enormous trees, there shone
stars of a wonderful golden brightness. The air was warm-scented as if
with flowers, and warm to breathe, yet they did not feel that their fur
coats were a bit too warm for the weather. The moss was so soft to their
feet that Edred and Elfrida wanted to feel it with their hands as well,
so down they went on all fours. Then they longed to lie down and roll on
it; they longed so much that they had to do it. It was a delicious
sensation, rolling in the soft moss.
Cousin Richard, still very much too big, stood looking down on them and
laughing. They were too busy rolling to look at each other.
"This," he said, "is a first-class lark. Now for the cleft in the chalk.
Shall I carry you?" he added politely, addressing the Mouldiwarp, who,
rather surprisingly, consented.
"Come on," he said to the children, and as he went they followed him.
There was something about the moss, or about the fur coats or the fur
gloves, that somehow made it seem easier and more natural to follow on
all fours--and really their hands were quite as useful to walk on as
their feet. Never had they felt so light, so gay, never had walking been
such easy work. They followed Richard through the forest till quite
abruptly, like the wall at the end of a shrubbery, a great cliff rose in
front of them, ending the forest. There was a cleft in it, they saw the
darkness of it rising above them as the moon came out from a cloud and
shone full on the cliff's white face--and the face of the cliff and the
shape of the cleft were very like that little cleft in the chalk that
the Mouldiwarp had made when it had pulled up turf on the Sussex downs
at home. And all this time Edred and Elfrida had never looked at each
other. There had been so many other things to look at.
"That's the way," said Cousin Richard, pointing up the dark cleft.
Though it was so dark Edred and Elfrida could see quite plainly that
there were no steps--only ledges that a very polite goat might have said
were a foothold.
"You couldn't climb up there," Edred said to the great Richard; yet
somehow he never doubted that he and Elfrida could.
"No," said the Mouldiwarp, leaping from Richard's arms to the ground, "I
must carry him"--and it grew to Polar bear size quite calmly before
their very eyes.
"They don't see it--even yet," said Richard to the mole.
"See what?" Elfrida asked.
"Why, what your disguise is. You're cats, my dear cousins, white cats!"
Then Edred and Elfrida did look at each other, and it was quite true,
they _were_.
"I'll tell you what my plan is," Richard went on. "The people of this
country have never seen tame cats. They think a person who can tame
animals is a magician. I found that out when I was here before. So now
I've got three tame animals, all white too, that is, if you'll play," he
added to the Mouldiwarp. "You _will_ play, won't you?"
"Oh, yes, I'll play!" it said, snarling a little.
"And you cats must only mew and purr, and do whatever I tell you. You'll
see how I work it. Don't do anything for any one but me and your
father."
"Is father really here?" asked Elfrida, trembling a little.
"He's on the other side of the great cliff," said Richard,--"the cliff
no man can climb. But _you_ can come."
He got on the Mouldiwarp's back and put his arms round its
Polar-bear-like neck, and it began to climb. That _was_ a climb. Even
the cats, which Edred and Elfrida now could not help seeing that they
were, found it as much as they could do to keep their footing on those
little, smooth, shelving ledges. If it had not been that they had cat's
eyes, and so could see in the dark, they never could have done it. And
it was such a long, long climb too; it seemed as though it would last
for ever.
"I've heard of foreign climbs," said Elfrida, "but I never thought they
would be like this. I suppose it _is_ foreign?"
"South American," said Richard. "You can look for it on the map when you
get home--but you won't find it. Come on!"
And then when they had climbed to the top of the cliff they had to go
down on the other side. For the cliff rose like a wall between the
forest and a wide plain, and by the time they reached that plain the sun
was looking down at them over the cliff.
The plain was very large and very wonderful, and a towering wall of
cliff ran all round it. The plain was all laid out in roads and avenues
and fields and parks. Towns and palaces were dotted about it--a tall
aqueduct on hundreds of pillars brought water from an arch in the face
of the cliff to the middle of the plain, and from these canals ran out
to the cliff wall that bounded the plain all round, even and straight,
like the spokes of a wheel, and disappeared under low arches of stone,
back under the cliff. There were lakes, there were gardens, there were
great stone buildings whose roofs shone like gold where the rising sun
struck them.
In the fields were long-horned cattle and strange, high-shouldered
sheep, which Richard said were llamas.
"I know," he explained, "from seeing them on the postage stamps."
They advanced into the plain and sat down under a spreading tree.
"We must just wait till we're found," said Richard. He had assumed
entire command of the expedition, and Edred and Elfrida, being cats, had
to submit, but they did not like it.
Presently shepherds coming early to attend to their flocks found a boy
in strange clothes, attended by a great white bear and two white cats,
sitting under a tree.
The shepherds did not seem afraid of the bear--only curious and
interested; but when the Mouldiwarp had stood up on its hind legs and
bowed gravely and the cats had stood up and lain down and shaken paws
and turned somersaults at the word of command one of the shepherds
wrapped his red woollen cloak round him with an air of determination
and, making signs that Richard was to follow, set off with all his might
for the nearest town.
Quite soon they found themselves in the central square of one of the
most beautiful towns in the world. I wish I had time to tell you exactly
what it was like, but I have not. I can only say that it was at once
clean and grand, splendid and comfortable. There was not a dirty corner
nor a sad face from one end of the town to the other. The houses were
made of great blocks of stone inlaid wonderfully with gold and silver;
clear streams--or baby canals--ran by the side of every street, and each
street had a double row of trees running all along its wide length.
There were open, grassy spaces and flower-beds set with flowers, some
glowing with their natural and lovely colours and some cunningly
fashioned of gold and silver and jewels. There were fountains and
miniature waterfalls. The faces of the people were dark, but kind and
unwrinkled. There was a market with stalls of pleasant fruits and cakes
and bright-coloured, soft clothes. There was a great Hall in the middle
of the town with a garden on its flat roof, and to this Hall the
shepherd led the party.
[Illustration: "THE HOUSES WERE MADE OF GREAT BLOCKS OF STONE."]
The big doors of inlaid wood were set wide and a crowd, all dressed in
soft stuffs of beautiful colours, filled the long room inside. The room
was open to the sky; a wrinkled awning drawn close at one side showed
that the people could have a roof when it suited them.
There was a raised stone platform at one end, and on this three chairs.
The crowd made way for the shepherd and his following, and as they drew
near to the raised platform the two white cats, who were Edred and
Elfrida, looked up and saw in the middle and biggest chair a splendid,
dark-faced man in a kind of fringed turban with two long feathers in it,
and in the two chairs to right and left of him, clothed in beautiful
embroidered stuffs, with shining collars of jewels about their necks,
Father and Uncle Jim!
"Not a word!" said Cousin Dick, just in time to restrain the voices of
the children who were cats. Their actions he could not restrain. Every
one in that Hall saw two white cats spring forward and rub themselves
against the legs of the man who sat in the right-hand chair. Compelled
to silence as they were by the danger of their position, Edred and
Elfrida rubbed their white-cat bodies against their father's legs in a
rapture which I cannot describe and purred enthusiastically. It was a
wonderful relief to be able to purr, since they must not speak.
The King--he who sat on the high seat--stood up, looking down on them
with wise, kind eyes, and spoke, seeming to ask a question.
Quite as wonderfully as any trained bear, and far more gracefully, the
white Mouldiwarp danced before the King of that mysterious hidden
kingdom.
Then Dick whistled, and Edred and Elfrida withdrew themselves from their
passionate caresses of the only parts of their father that they could
get at, and stood upon their white-hind-cat-feet.
"The minuet," said Edred, in a rapid whisper. Dick whistled a tune that
they had never heard, but the tune was right; and now was seen the
spectacle of two white cats slowly and solemnly going through the
figures of that complicated dance, to the music of Dick's clear
whistling, turning, bowing, pacing with all the graces that Aunt Edith
had taught them when they were Edred and Elfrida and not white cats.
When the last bow and curtsey ended the dance, the King himself shouted
some word that they were sure meant, "Well done!" All the people shouted
the same word, and only father and Uncle Jim shouted "Bravo!"
Then the King questioned Dick.
No answer. He laid his finger on his lips.
Then the King spoke to father, and he in turn tried questions, in
English and French and then in other languages. And still Dick kept on
laying his finger on his lips, and the white bear shook its head quite
sadly, and the white cats purred aloud with their eyes on their father.
Richard stooped. "When your father goes out, follow him," he whispered.
And so, when the King rose from his throne and went out, and every one
else did the same, the white cats, deserting Dick, followed close on
their father's footsteps. When the King saw this, he spoke to the men
about him, who were leading Richard in another direction, and presently
the cats and the bear that was the Mouldiwarp, and Richard found
themselves alone with Uncle Jim and the father of Elfrida on a beautiful
terrace shaded by trees, and set all along its edge with wonderful
trailing flowers of red and white and purple that grew out of vases of
solid silver.
And now, there being none of the brown people near, Richard looked full
in the eyes of the father of Edred and Elfrida, and said in a very low
voice--
"I am English. I've come to rescue you."
"You're a bold boy," said Edred and Elfrida's father, "but rescue's
impossible."
"There's not much time," said Richard again; "they've only let us come
here just to see if you know us. I expect they're listening. You are
Lord Arden now--the old lord is dead. I can get you out if you do
exactly as I say."
"It's worth trying," said Uncle Jim,--"it's worth trying anyhow,
whatever it is."
"Are you free to go where you like?"
"Yes," said Lord Arden--not Edred, but Edred's father, for Edred was now
no longer Lord Arden. "You see there's no way out but the one, and
that's guarded by a hundred men with poisoned arrows."
"There _is_ another way," said Richard; "the way we came. The white bear
can carry you, one at a time."
"Shall we risk it?" said Lord Arden, a little doubtfully.
"Rather!" said Uncle Jim; "think of Edith and the kids."
"That's what I _am_ thinking of," said Lord Arden; "while we're alive
there's a chance. If we try this and fail, they'll kill us."
"You won't fail," said Richard. "I'll help you to get home; but I would
like to know how you got into this fix. It's only curiosity. But I wish
you'd tell me. Perhaps I shan't see you again after to-day."
"We stumbled on the entrance, the only entrance to the golden plain,"
said Lord Arden, "prospecting for gold among these mountains. They have
kept us prisoners ever since, because they are determined not to let the
world know of the existence of the plain. There are always rumours of
it, but so far no 'civilised' people have found it. Every King when he
comes to the throne takes an oath that he will die sooner than allow the
plain to be infected by the wicked cruelties of modern civilisation."
"I think so too," said Dick.
"This is an older civilisation than that of the Incas," said Lord Arden,
"and it is the most beautiful life I have ever dreamed of. If they had
trusted me, I would never have betrayed them. If I escape, I will never
betray them. If I let in our horrible system of trusts and syndicates,
and commercialism and crime, on this golden life, I should know myself
to be as great a criminal as though I had thrown a little child to wild
beasts."
The white cats noticed with wonder and respect that their father
addressed Richard exactly as though he had been a grown-up.
"We managed to send one line to a newspaper, to say that we were taken
by bandits," Lord Arden went on; "it was all that they would allow us to
do. But except that we have not been free, we have had everything--food,
clothes, kindness, justice, affection. We _must_ escape, if we can,
because of my sister and the children, but it is like going out of Eden
into the Black Country."
"That's so," said Uncle Jim.
"And if we're not to see you again," Lord Arden went on, "tell me why
you have come--at great risk it must be--to help us."
"I owe a debt," said Richard, in a low voice, "to all who bear the name
of Arden." His voice sank so low that the two cats could only hear the
words "head of the house."
"And now," Richard went on, "you see that black chink over there?" he
pointed to the crevice in the cliff. "Be there, both of you, at
moonrise, and you shall get away safely to Arden Castle."
"You must come with us, of course," said Lord Arden. "I might be of
service to you. We have quite a respectable little fortune in a bank at
Lima--not in our own names--but we can get it out, if you can get _us_
out. You've brought us luck, I'm certain of it. Won't you go with us,
and share it?"
"I can't," said Richard. "I must go back to my own time, my own place, I
mean. Now I'll go. Come on, cats."
The cats looked imploringly at their father, but they went and stood by
Richard.
"I suppose we _may_ go?" he asked.
"Every one is perfectly free here," said Lord Arden. "The only thing you
may not do is to leave the golden plain. It is very strange. There are
hardly any laws. We are all free to do as we like, and no one seems to
like to do anything that hurts any one else. Only if, any one is caught
trying to get into the outer world, or to let the outer world in, he is
killed--without pain, and not as vengeance but as necessity."
The white cats looked at each other rather ruefully. This was not at all
the way in which they remembered their daddy's talking to them.
"But," said Lord Arden, "for the children and my sister we must risk it.
I trust you completely, and we will be at the crevice when the moon
rises."
So Richard and his three white animals went out down steps cut in the
solid rock, and the townspeople crowded round them with fruits and
maize-cakes for Richard, and milk in golden platters for the cats.
And later Richard made signs of being sleepy, and they let him go away
among the fields, followed by the three white creatures. And at the
appointed hour they all met under the vast cliff that was the natural
wall and guardian of the golden plain.
And the Mouldiwarp carried Uncle Jim up to the top, and then came back
for Lord Arden and Richard. But before there was time to do more a shout
went up, and a thousand torches sprang to life in the city they had
left, and they knew that their flight had been discovered.
"There's no time," the white Bear-Mouldiwarp, to the utter astonishment
of Lord Arden, opened its long mouth and spoke. And the white cats also
opened their mouths and cried, "Oh, daddy, how awful! what shall we do?"
"Hold your silly tongues," said the Mouldiwarp crossly. "You was told
not to go gossiping. Here! scratch a way out with them white paws of
yours."
It set the example, scratching at the enormous cliff with those strong,
blunt, curved front feet of it. And the cats scratched too, with their
white, padded gloves that had tiger claws to them. And the rock
yielded--there was a white crack--wider, wider. And the swaying,
swirling torches came nearer and nearer across the plain.
"In with you!" cried the Mouldiwarp; "in with you!"
"Jim!" said Lord Arden. "I'll not go without Jim!"
"He's half-way there already," said the Mouldiwarp, pushing Lord Arden
with its great white shoulder. "Come, I say, come!" It pushed them all
into the crack of the rock, and the cliff closed firm and fast behind
them, an unanswerable "_No_" set up in the face of their pursuers.
"This way out," said the Mouldiwarp, pointing its dusty claw to where
ahead light showed.
"Why," said Edred, "it's the smugglers' cave--and there's the clock!"
Next moment there it wasn't, for Richard had leapt on it, and he and it
had vanished together, the Mouldiwarp clinging to the hour hand at the
last moment.
The white cats, which were Edred and Elfrida, drew back from the whirl
of the hands that was the first step towards vanishment. They saw their
father and Uncle Jim go up the steps that led to the rude wooden door
whose key was like a church key--the door that led to the opening among
the furze that they had never been able to find again.
When the vanishing of the clock allowed them to follow, and they
regained the sunny outer air where the skylarks were singing as usual,
they were just in time to see two figures going towards the castle and
very near it.
They turned to look at each other.
"Why," said Edred, "you're not a cat any more!"
"No more are you, if it comes to that," said Elfrida. "Oh, Edred,
they're going in at the big gate! Do you think it's really real--or have
we just dreamed it--this time? It was much more dreamish than any of the
other things."
"I feel," said Edred, sitting down abruptly, "as if I'd been a cat all
my life, and been swung round by my tail every day of my life. I think
I'll sit here till I'm quite sure whether I'm a white cat or Edred
Arden."
"I know which _I_ am," said Elfrida; but she, too, was not sorry to sit
down.
"That's easy. You aren't either of them," said Edred.
· · · · ·
When, half an hour later, they slowly went down to the castle, still
doubtful whether anything magic had ever really happened, or whether all
the magic things that had seemed to happen had really been only a sort
of double, or twin, dream. They were met at the door by Aunt Edith, pale
as the pearl and ivory of the white clock, and with eyes that shone like
the dewdrops on the wild flowers that Elfrida had given to the Queen.
"Oh, kiddies!" she cried. "Oh, dear, darling kiddies!"
And she went down on her knees so that she should be nearer their own
height and could embrace them on more equal terms.
"Something lovely's happened," she said; "something so beautiful that
you won't be able to believe it."
They kissed her heartily, partly out of affection, and partly to conceal
their want of surprise.
"Darlings, it's the loveliest thing that could possibly happen. What do
you think?"
"Daddy's come home," said Elfrida, feeling dreadfully deceitful.
"Yes," said Aunt Edith. "How clever of you, my pet! And Uncle Jim.
They've been kept prisoners in South America, and an English boy with a
performing bear helped them to escape."
No mention of cats. The children felt hurt.
"And they had the most dreadful time--months and months and
months--coming across the interior--no water, and Indians and all sorts
of adventures; and daddy had fever, and would insist that the bear was
the Mouldiwarp--our crest, you know--come to life, and talking just like
you or me, and that there were white cats that had your voices, and
called him daddy. But he's all right now, only very weak. That's why I'm
telling you all this. You must be very quiet and gentle. Oh, my dears,
it's too good to be true, too good to be true!"
· · · · ·
Now, was it the father of Edred and Elfrida who had brain fever and
fancied things? Or did they, blameless of fever, and not too guilty of
brains, imagine it all? Uncle Jim can tell you exactly how it all
happened. There is no magic in _his_ story. Father--I mean Lord
Arden--does not talk of what he dreamed when he had brain fever. And
Edred and Elfrida do not talk of what happened when they hadn't. At
least they do, but only to me.
It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you
go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers
and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think
nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.
· · · · ·
"I've found the most wonderful photographs of pictures of Arden Castle,"
said Aunt Edith, later on. "We can restore the castle perfectly from
them. I do wish I knew where the original pictures were."
"I'm afraid we can't restore the castle," said Lord Arden laughing; "our
little fortune's enough to keep us going quite comfortably--but it won't
rebuild Norman masonry."
"I do wish we could have found the buried treasure," said Edred.
"We've got treasure enough," said Aunt Edith, looking at Uncle Jim.
As for what Elfrida thinks--well, I wish you could have seen her face
when she went into the parlour that evening after Aunt Edith had knelt
down to meet them on equal terms, and tell them of the treasure of love
and joy that had come home to Arden.
There was Lord Arden, looking exactly like the Lord Arden she had known
in the Gunpowder Plot days, and also exactly like the daddy she had
known all her life, sitting at ease in the big chair just underneath the
secret panel behind which Sir Edward Talbot had hidden when he was
pretending to be the Chevalier St. George. His dear face was just the
same and the smile on it was her own smile--the merry, tender, twinkling
smile that was for her and for no one else in the world. It was just a
moment that she stood at the door. But it was one of these moments that
are as short as a watch-tick, and as long as a year. She stood there and
asked herself, "Have I dreamed it all? Isn't there really any Mouldiwarp
or any treasure?"
And then a great wave of love and longing caught at her, and she knew
that, Mouldiwarp or no Mouldiwarp, the treasure was hers, and in one
flash she was across the room and in her father's arms, sobbing and
laughing and saying again and again--
"Oh, my daddy! Oh, my daddy, my daddy!"
THE END
Transcriber's Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original--this e-text is public
domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)