one morning, when it was still and hot and the fern-tips were just uncurling and all the little flowers smelling so sweet, it came over me that I must venture. I couldn't see the sea, but I could hear it moving and breathing far off. There was a ground haze that covered the Warren, and made it seem all the stranger and all the more mysterious, so that it stirred up something in me that wanted to get farther away than the farm and going to school and going to chapel. So instead of going to school I went to an old cow-shed, and hid up my slate and my book and ran off. The haze was not everywhere. It lay in long wisps like you may have seen the gorse smoke this evening, crawling, as you might say, in streaks on the sides of the hills. In places there was none at all, and the sun shone from a sky as blue as forgetme-nots. After I'd run a bit I came out into a clear space. I tell you I was thirteen then. I could read and write, and was strong and not afraid of any one, man nor boy. But I was quite ignorant of everything away from where I was brought up, and full of silly fears about fairies and witches and gipsies. I was afraid of clouds and darkness too. I got that from hearing them tell so often of how my father was killed by lightning. There you are now! hear that whine in the chimney? I told you it was going to blow! I'd best put a

You

light. It goes dark quicker than you expect this time of year.

Murdoch got up and lit a ship's lantern that stood on a small shelf in the corner of the room. The Bank Manager made no remark, and the Only Man continued :

Well, when I got into that clearing in the haze I came over timid all at once. Larks were singing and bumble-bees were buzzing about, and, like a kind of mutter in the ground, I could hear the sea. But in spite of all that an awful seal of silence, as you might say, was set on everything. I think I wished heartily I was in the school hearing the other children gabbling, and cross old Morgan shouting at the top of his voice and fumbling with his stick. But I got better in a bit, and off I went again into the haze, whistling and putting my best foot forward. So on and on I went through clear patches and hazy patches, with the sandhills looming up and fainting away, all sorts of queer shapes. Always in front of me I could hear the sea, but I never seemed to come up with it. I think I soon stopped whistling, and fell back on my old fears. The sand was all so soft to tread and made no noise, and now and then I would pass skulls of animals, and there seemed to be bones of dead creatures everywhere. All at once I saw the sea below me from the top of a sand-cliff.

and seemed to melt into the haze all round. There were long rollers, and they came heaving in with even shining backs and burst sudden with a clang-like breaking bottles, I remember thinking,-and then shooting their white lather up the beach. That was the first time I'd seen the sea close to, and it seemed to me a fearful monster. But now I don't know but what I think the sand is a worse enemy to man. The sea gets you if it can, and drowns you quick, but the sand . . . Mr Brandrith, with your permission, I'll just put up these bits of wood shutters. It's more cosy now the evenings are drawing in. In the half light you'd often think there were faces looking at you, though you're used to the Warren as I am. Of course, there's no denying the dead do walk. They're rough tack, these shutters-no fastenings, made of two margarine-boxes, but they

serve.

even

Now where are we? Oh, about the sea-well, to tell the truth, I ran away from it; not that I was afraid of the water so much as what might come out of it. You see, I'd been filled up with these tales of sea-serpents and mermaids and shaggy man-eating seahorses and what not. Yes, after I'd looked a little I started to double back. But it wasn't so easy to run straight from the noise as it had been to make for it. All my courage

quite sick with fear, for the valleys and hills looked everywhere alike. All at once I came right across my tracks. But they were funny tracks: they looked as if I had been walking on all fours. Then I saw what it was. My crossironed heels were there sure enough, but some one else had come along barefoot since I had gone by that way, and had been following me wherever I had been. That sent the blood flying over my body. I stopped breathing to listen, and I heard a voice calling from somewhere, "Con! Con!" The haze was getting lighter; you could see for three or four hundred yards in it, and overhead the bare blue sky showed through the white shreds that wafted this

way and that without any wind.

I didn't know whom the voice was calling to, but I shouted back "Yes!" and waited a minute, and a little girl came running from the fog. She stopped when she saw her mistake, and said in English,

Why did you call 'Yes'? You're a boy from the village."

"Are you the little girl from Cae'r Groes?" I said to her in Welsh.

"I'm not little," said she, turning proud in her speaking and in her look all at once, "I've got a sweetheart."

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I looked hard at her. She had a way with her that was not like the village girls; she seemed so independent, so striking like, yet she was not much to look at. She was dark and dumpy, with black hair and dark sallow skin. Only her mouth was very beautiful, and her eyes big. Con," she said, looking past me over my shoulder and speaking again in English, "you're bad. I'm not friends with you." I turned round, and saw a boy about my own age standing there. He was not like children of the village either. He was, in his way, more striking than the girl. He made me feel shy, and I wasn't used to feeling shy with boys. Though he was dressed in rags, there was a smack of blood and breed about him. A snake's a proper gentleman to look at, but he makes you shudder! Con was thin. His skin was as dark as the girl's. His face was small, with a very straight well-shaped nose. He had dark peculiar eyes that looked beady as a lizard's. He stared at me with his eyes screwed, as if I was something he hardly noticed, and spoke to the girl in a language I could not understand. She frowned at him. But she turned to me and smiled, showing all her teeth.

རྒྱུ

VOL. CCXVII.-NO. MCCCXI.

"I'm Mariana; what is your name? she said. 'Fred Murdoch," I told her.

"Go and take him to play with you," said Con, talking Welsh this time. "He's more fit to play with girls than I am."

"He's more fit to play with me than gipsies," said the girl. And when she'd said that the boy went up to her as if he meant no harm, and then he struck her smart in the face. She took a pace back with her eyes glowing like fire, and I shouted out, You come and do that to me, you coward !'

66

The lad spat on the sand, and said quite quiet, "You're a grand gentleman, aren't you?" There was something in his voice that was so soft and sleek that it made me in a rage, and I rushed at him and hit out for his mouth. But he had learned science and I hadn't. He hardly moved, but he dodged my blow and tripped me, and down he came on top of me and pinned me so that I couldn't move. And there he held me while I tried. to get free, and mocked me, and the girl stood by and said nothing. Then he drew a knife. That made me feel funny, I can tell you, but I didn't let on, and I glared at him savage as a bull.

"You wouldn't dare to kill him!" said the girl when she saw him flash that out.

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"Blow, blow, blow,

And nobody will know
Who lies down below!'

"If you get home alive you tell that rhyme to old Anne Jones, and say you heard some one singing it in a dream, and see what a face she will make. And you tell her, too, that old Mother Biddle can see through the sand like water, and she knows where more dead men lie in the Warren than Anne Jones has pots of money buried."

He'd tricked me down so easy, and he was so pleased with his knife and his talk that he hadn't reckoned that I was a strong lad when I had the chance. I didn't give him time to think better. I toppled him like a skittle-pin, pitched him on his stomach, had his knife from him, and knelt on his back. Can you see through the sand?" I shouts out, and I rubs his face in it as he squirmed under me. Then I let him go, and I threw his knife after him. But the little girl wasn't pleased at all. She cried, and wouldn't let me come near her.

And I didn't see

her again for seven years. I was punished for running away from school and going on the Warren, and besides that I'd had enough to scare me. The next time I saw her was in the village coming with Anne Jones from the funeral of her sister by adoption, Lizzie Ellen, Anne Jones' eldest girl. She was all dressed in black. She looked quite different to when I had seen her on the Warren. She had grown taller and slimmer. She turned and looked at me as she came out of the churchyard gate-just one look, but I felt as if her eyes went right into me and set me on fire. Whatever I did for days after that I couldn't get the picture of Mariana out of my head. The way she had looked at me, the way she had stood, the way she had walked away seemed to keep coming to me like patches of light you see so often flying on the Warren on cloudy days.

The Sunday but one after that I put on my best clothes, and went off into the Warren to Cae'r Groes. I was very shy and awkward, and I wondered whatever I should say. I thought at first to wander about and take my chance of seeing Mariana. You see you can tell from the way I talk I was falling in love. You will think me foolish. But that thought didn't come to me at all. I only felt in myself that I wanted to see Mariana again, almost, you might say, out of

The Warren was as much a strange land to me as it had been when I was a boy, though, of course, it didn't have the same terrors. When I came in sight of the little farm in that great hollow among the sandhills, that's just a little farther, as I was telling you, than the one with the salt pool in it, I saw Anne Jones walking about in her clogs, and with a shawl thrown over her head, carrying a pail. As soon as she saw me she popped inside. When I got by the farm I felt foolish enough. I stood there holding the little wooden gate for a minute wondering how it would do if I went in and asked the time. And then Anne Jones came and stood in the doorway. She looked quite smart by now with a new cloth cap on her head and a pair of new boots on her feet, and a neat bodice and skirt on. She smiled at me and said, "It's a nice day for you to come to Cae'r Groes, Fred Murdoch. The kettle's boiling, so you come in this minute and have a cup of tea."

"I was just thinking of asking the time, Mrs Jones," I said, still biding by my old excuse. But I wasn't very clear in my speech. I felt so foolish and red in the face, and I thought my clothes seemed so stiff and new. She didn't quite get what I said, or else she was thinking of something else, for she said, "Time, bachgan! dear me, there's plenty of time for everything when you're young. Come inside with you!"

So I went in. Everything was very homely and pretty in the cottage; all the bits of brass cleaned as bright as you could see your face in them, and all the ornaments looking very old-fashioned.

Mariana has gone for driftwood. Sit you down, she won't be long, then we'll all have a cup of tea," said Anne, and she began to lay out the best china. "It does us good to see a stranger here sometimes. It's very lonely out here, and now there's only two of us left. It's a hard thing, bachgan, to lose a child, but Lizzie Ellen had two years of suffering, poor dear, and you can't say it isn't for the best that the Lord has taken her." Anne said all this without pulling out her handkerchief, which women generally do when speaking of death, and the funeral had not been a fortnight since, but Anne was a woman with more sense than foolishness, though she had a soft heart. She went on talking, putting things out on the table, and asking me questions all the time. By the way she went about it you wouldn't guess but what I'd been familiar in the house all my life, and I began to lose my shyness and talked away as glib as a starling.

Then I heard the little gate open, and I came over foolish again all at once. Mariana had heard us talking, and she stopped in the doorway wondering who the stranger could be.

"Come in, girl," said Anne.