"Every man to his post and God save us all!" cried the captain when the food was spread. They clattered off--they were in their armor now--and Dickie knelt down again and went on scratching with the nail.
The air was full of shouting, and the sound of guns, and the clash of armor, and a shattering sound like a giant mallet striking a giant drum--a sound that came and came again at five-minute intervals--and the shrieks of wounded men. Dickie pressed up the grass to cover the marks he had made on the stone, so low as to be almost underground and quite hidden by the grass roots.
Then he brushed the stone dust from his hands and stood up.
The treasure was found and its hiding-place marked. Now he would find Edred and Elfrida, and they would go back. Whether he was Lord of Arden or no, it was he and no other who had restored the fallen fortunes of that noble house.
He turned to go the way his cousins had gone. He could see the men-at-arms crowding in the archway of the great gate tower. From a window to his right a lady leaned, pale with terror, and with her were Edred and Elfrida--he could just see their white faces. He made for the door below that window. But it was too late. That dull, thudding sound came again, and this time it was followed by a great crash and a great shouting. The blue sky showed through the archway where the tall gates had been and under the arch was a mass of men shouting, screaming, struggling, and the gleam of steel and the scarlet of brave blood.
Dickie forgot all about the door below the window, forgot all about his cousins, forgot that he had found the treasure and that it was now his business to get himself and the others safely back to their own times. He only saw the house he loved broken into by men he hated; he saw the men he loved spending their blood like water to defend that house.
He drew the little sword that hung at his side and shouting "An Arden! an Arden!" he rushed towards the swaying, staggering _mêlée_. He reached it just as the leader of the attacking party had hewn his way through the Arden men and taken his first step on the flagged path of the courtyard. The first step was his last. He stopped, a big, burly fellow in a leathern coat and steel round cap, and looked, bewildered, at the little figure coming at him with all the fire and courage of the Ardens burning in his blue eyes. The big man laughed, and as he laughed Dickie lunged with his sword--the way his tutor had taught him--and the little sword--no tailor's ornament to a Court dress, but a piece of true steel--went straight and true up into the heart of that big rebel. The man fell, wrenching the blade from Dickie's hand.