“They’re making offerings to their Amulet,” said Anthea. “We’d better give something too.”
The pockets of the party, hastily explored, yielded a piece of pink tape, a bit of sealing-wax, and part of the Waterbury watch that Robert had not been able to help taking to pieces at Christmas and had never had time to rearrange. Most boys have a watch in this condition.
They presented their offerings, and Anthea added the red roses.
The headman who took the things looked at them with awe, especially at the red roses and the Waterbury-watch fragment.
“This is a day of very wondrous happenings,” he said. “I have no more room in me to be astonished. Our maiden said there was peace between you and us. But for this coming of a foe we should have made sure.”
“_Yes_. Don’t I keep telling you we are?” Robert said. “Look here. I will give you a sign. You see this.” He held out the toy pistol. “I shall speak to it, and if it answers me you will know that I and the others are come to guard your sacred thing—that we’ve just made the offerings to.”
“Will that god whose image you hold in your hand speak to you alone, or shall I also hear it?” asked the man cautiously.
“You’ll be surprised when you _do_ hear it,” said Robert. “Now, then.” He looked at the pistol and said—
“If we are to guard the sacred treasure within”—he pointed to the hedged-in space—“speak with thy loud voice, and we shall obey.”
He pulled the trigger, and the cap went off. The noise was loud, for it was a two-shilling pistol, and the caps were excellent.
Every man, woman, and child in the village fell on its face on the sand.
The headman who had accepted the test rose first.
“The voice has spoken,” he said. “Lead them into the ante-room of the sacred thing.”
So now the four children were led in through the opening of the hedge and round the lane till they came to an opening in the inner hedge, and they went through an opening in that, and so passed into another lane.
The thing was built something like this, and all the hedges were of brushwood and thorns:
“It’s like the maze at Hampton Court,” whispered Anthea.
The lanes were all open to the sky, but the little hut in the middle of the maze was round-roofed, and a curtain of skins hung over the doorway.