"Truck?" Dickie puzzled. "Truck?... Oh, you mean a lorry, I s'pose?... Funny how you Yankee Doodles can't speak English like us."

Mary sensed that this was not a very tactful remark, and tried to change the conversation by drawing attention to Macbeth, who, replete with spam, was dozing by the fire.

She rolled him over and tickled his chest in the way he loved.

"Do you have little dogs like this? Isn't he sweet? We've brought him up, and I think I'd die without him," and taking a crumpled piece of green ribbon from her curls she tied it to the little dog's collar.

Then their new friends began to clear up and explained that they would take them down the valley with them and send them home to Seven Gates in a car or truck when they reached the road.

"We shall like that very much," Dickie said. "An' if one of you could manage to spare just a few minutes to come along and see my big brother and Peter and Peter's Aunt and Uncle Beaver and just explain a bit how we happened to be a bit late, that would be very important to us..."

"Do you think p'raps you could?" Mary wheedled as Jerry put a fresh piece of chewing gum in his mouth. But before he could answer Dickie was off again and was talking so fast that none of them heard the sound of horses' hooves on the loose stones outside the cave.

"You'd be surprised to see where we're living now. It's all mysterious and utterly surrounded by white gates. There's a ghosty wood and two funny old dwarfs - they're not really dwarfs, of course, but they're ugly and like Snow White's dwarfs - living close by. An' then, of course, there's Uncle Micah himself, and he's really very ghosty indeed, and wanders about and grumps into his beard and talks like a scripture lesson... But it's the gates that are so peculiar. How many d'you think there are, pard?" he added to Jerry.

"Seven!" came a strange voice from the mouth of the cave. "Tell me, am I right?"

Jake and Jerry stopped what they were doing and stopped chewing as well. Macbeth sat up and barked. Mary smiled at what she saw and Dickie's mouth dropped open in astonishment.

Outside in the morning sun, sitting motionless on a magnificent horse, was the most handsome man they had ever seen. He was wearing a khaki shirt with a coloured scarf round his neck, beautiful riding breeches and polished riding boots. His black hair was crinkly and so were his brown eyes and the corners of his laughing mouth.

"Am I right?" he repeated. "I bet there are seven. It's my lucky number... Anyway, what's going on here? Who are these children?"