“Sure, ’tis the doctor’s leave as you’s got. There’s no time to lose, Miss Carlyle, dear. An’ you can come along this way. ’Tis the way found by himself, poor natural; but he described of it to me proper clever. ‘You goes along,’ ses ’e, ‘to that there medder bordering the road. An’ close by there,’ ses ’e, ‘you’ll see a wide ditch-like way, with nettles growing thick so as no one notices. Dry it be in summer, and deep it be; and you goes along careful; and there be room to walk nigh upstanding all way through medder till you comes to the wood what belongs to St. Benedick’s school and sees the flowers. Aye, they’re grand to watch, a-laying secret in the ditch,’ ses he, ‘but the young ladies is grander; but go careful there fer fear they sees you, and crouch and crawl.’ Well, I promises him to take that there way, it being a full mile quicker an’ nearer. So, see here, Miss, step along now; for you’re safe with me, as you knows, and the lad’s right-down bad wi’ calling for you.” Hardly knowing what she did, Betty followed Anna Grimes’s lead. Parting the great tangled mass of grasses and bracken at the side of the wood, the woman displayed the opening of a wide disused ditch. She crouched down and started off, while Betty followed on behind. Here was a thrilly adventure, indeed, if she had had time to think of the journey in that light as she followed her guide. But Betty’s mind was working too rapidly as she made two and two into a sensible four, while thinking out the information scraps which Mrs. Grimes had given her. For “he” must be the poor boy of the adventure on that day when she had clambered out of Witch’s Wood and taken his part against the village urchins who had been ill-treating him. But what could he know of the lost Cup? “Well”--a light seemed to be gradually dawning over things as she thought--“he knew this queer way along from the meadow; and so he’s known the way into our school wood. And he’s been there--Mrs. Grimes says so; and he’s watched me gardening. And he heard me say, on that morning when I was talking to Gerry (and I _did_ say it, for I remember), that I would rather anything happened than that we should lose the Cup. I said, too (I _did_ say it, or else Gerry did), that we wanted to keep it on Midsummer Day. Oh, what comes next? I suppose he mixed it up in his poor head and didn’t understand,” said Betty to herself in a motherly way, just as her thoughts were switched off the matter for a moment by the sound of Anna Grimes’s voice just ahead. “We’s out of the ditch-like way now, Miss, and here’s the medder. You can stand up now and stretch yerself proper before we goes on. ’Twill on’y be a little ways on now. The van’s down the moor a bit, nearer than we was last time you sees us. Out of the winds--” The queer pilgrimage continued.