And it was just as the bike nosed downward that Shep reached up, clamped his teeth firmly on the ragged edge of the cut-off jeans just above Rolf’s knee, and dug all four paws solidly into the ground, putting on the brakes.

It was Rolf’s weak leg, the one he had hurt at the pool. The bike skidded wildly, crosswise off the path and started to fall over. Even so, it shouldn’t have fallen all the way, since Rolf was an experienced rider. He stuck out his leg to prop up the bike and stop the fall.

But his foot slipped on the sandy soil, his leg buckled, the bike fell, and Rolf went tumbling down the rest of the slope to the bottom of the dip.

“Shep!” he yelled—or tried to yell. Oddly, his voice came out as a small squeak. Furious, Rolf tried to sit up, but he didn’t make it even halfway. The dip around him seemed to fill up with a pearly white mist. It was impossible for him to see anything an arm’s length away. His head buzzed with a wild dizziness that made it feel as though he were spinning madly.

Rolf collapsed back onto the sand and everything blanked out.

2

Rolf gradually drifted back to consciousness.

The hot brilliance of the sun made everything seem red through his closed eyelids. Slowly, the buzz in his head eased off, and in its place he could hear two voices arguing. One voice was very deep-toned and very British in accent. The other was a high-pitched, very Irish tenor.

“…beastly fellows!” the deep voice was snorting.

“Ah, there you go again now,” retorted the Irish-sounding voice. “Don’t you know there’s no one speaks like that, these days? Indeed, it’s exactly like Dr. Watson with Sherlock Holmes, you sound, and out of a hundred years ago.”

“Well you are beastly fellows,” growled the other voice. “Pack of blackguards! Besides, what d’you mean—talk like a hundred years ago? Speak like any well-brought-up individual of good breeding, if I say it myself.”