The lonely plough

“Lancelot is a different creature to-day!” Helwise observed, hitting hard at the empty air, and getting the ball in her left eye for her pains. “Almost cheery and inclined to gambol—oh, I am sorry! Did it hurt? He was a little put out at breakfast, when the Duchess of Saddleback returned him a sixpenny postal order I had meant for a Home Tattle Limerick, instead of the subscription he had told me to send for her Cemetery Bazaar—Armer, please, over my head, not at it!—but of course anybody might do a thing like that, anybody, I mean, as busy as I am. It was the Duchess’s letter that upset him—I don’t know why, because it was charmingly friendly and polite. Said she hoped the sixpence wouldn’t be too late to win him the competition—nice of her, wasn’t it? What do you think? Lancelot says that now he’ll have to double his donation, though I can’t see any reason for it myself. Still, he didn’t really show temper about it, and I didn’t in the least mind asking him to check the month’s groceries directly afterwards. Of course, I can’t say that he showed any joie de vivre—I do think he’s lacking in joie de vivre—but he got the groceries to come out all right, and do you mind if we stop?—the ball’s caught in my hair-net.”

“Glad to hear he’s recovered!” Harriet returned, watching impatiently while Dandy set her hostess at liberty. “He was just about the limit, that day at Watters. Never saw such a jaundiced old crab-apple in my life! Rotten of him, though, not to turn up to bumble.”

“He’s gone to see his lordship off—your service, I think, Miss Shaw—but he should be back presently. He sent me down some flowers, this morning—his lordship, I mean—and a message to say he was prevented from calling. He makes a point of coming in to see me, as a rule, and I tell him all the things that want doing to the house, and we get on splendidly! I sent him an invitation to bumble, but something always seems to stop him. Last time it was toothache, and the time before it was a hair-cut or a motor-smash or some other very close shave.”

Dandy caught echoes of this vocal accompaniment as she smote wildly at dancing hanks of string under Harriet’s pitying gaze, seething with helpless rage at the flying ball as it spun over and under and apparently through the racquet, leaving her to plant weighty smashes upon space or the inoffensive pole. There was something diabolical in the way it shot down upon you like a bolt from the blue, and caught you on the nose when you weren’t looking. When you did hit it, (which was seldom) you struck with a murderous zest that nearly dislocated your shoulder, not in the least with the friendly dispatch of a drive at golf, or the esprit de corps of a clean clearing-shot at hockey. The one ball was a jolly little nipper you hoped to see again very shortly; the other a sportsman and a pal, the twelfth and keenest member of the team; but this was a jeering devil and an aeroplane and a merry-go-round and a slimy sneak, and you hit it as if you were killing wasps.

She was paired against the ladies with what Harriet called “the-man-who-scraped-up-behind,” and soon grasped that she had cause to be thankful, since he was not only a much better player than either of the enthusiasts, but was also thoroughly up to their little tricks. Occasionally he tipped Dandy a respectful wink to leave the ball to him, or to send it over instead of round, and she obeyed with anxious alacrity. She soon rose to his tactics, and when she discovered that, every time Harriet hit Armer, Armer responded by hitting Helwise, she made every effort to play up to him and keep control of the ball. When, by way of a change, Helwise hit her, and she couldn’t always manage to hit Harriet, it was even more exciting, though not so comfortable.

Even Bluecaster noticed the change in his agent as they walked the platform together. He was accustomed to seeing him more as a walking encyclopædia of solid business facts than as a man with half the wine of life yet untasted, and youth still to his hand. But to-day he looked younger and freer than he had done for a long time, his laugh was more ready, and his business worries seemed shelved. Even unanalytic Bluecaster could feel that his blood ran more strongly, and his pulse beat quicker.

Bluecaster himself seemed depressed and rather restless, one moment anathematising the delay of his train, the next hinting that he should stay on, in a tone that openly asked for encouragement. As the train came in at last, he thrust an envelope into Lanty’s hand, climbing reluctantly to his place.

“From that infernal Brack, I suppose!” he said in a tone of irritation, going across to close a window which he knew he would reopen immediately. “There’s no name to it, and the address might have been written with the poker, but I think it’s pretty obvious.”

Lancaster took it with a shrug—the usual, cheap envelope that carries unsigned slander. The postmark gave no sort of clue, and the fierce venom of the writing disguised it effectually. Within was a page torn from the Book of Ezekiel, scored carefully so that the phrases ran into a connected message. Lanty read it aloud as he stood by the open door.

“Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord God. And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity and that divine lies ... and ye shall know that I am the Lord God. Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall ... say unto them ... that it shall fall ... there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it.

“Thus saith the Lord God; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great hailstones in my fury to consume it. So will I break down the wall ... and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall ... and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and will say unto you, The wall is no more ... there is no peace, saith the Lord God.”

On the margin was scrawled the one word “March” in the vitriolic hand of the envelope, but that was all. Everything else had been left to Ezekiel.

Lancaster looked up with a laugh.

“Must be Brack!” he agreed, making as if he would tear the page across, and then, since, after all, it was sacred speech, however distorted, folding it and slipping it into his pocket. “The same trail of omniscience is over it all! I ran into him in Witham on Saturday, and suggested that, if he was really bothered over the matter, we might put him on to some other place. ’Tisn’t business, but it might save us trouble in the end, and Thweng won’t go wanting. However, he wasn’t having any—talked about sticking to the ship and holding by the fort, like Casabianca and Sankey and Moody mixed. That annoyed me a bit, though he was quite quiet and polite—didn’t even offer me his confounded Turkish cigarettes! Just as we separated, he asked quite casually whether I believed in clairvoyance. I said no rather shortly, for I was keen to be off. (I’d have said no, in any case, to him.) Then he told me he’d come across a lot of it in America, been rather thick with some chap who went in for it professionally, and would have it Brack had the gift, too. This fellow gave him some rather curious information—the name of the farm he would take in England, for instance. That was certainly queer. Thweng isn’t the sort of name you’d naturally get your tongue round without a little assistance! He looked as if he could tell me a lot more if he chose, only I didn’t stop for it. He rapped out something after me, but I didn’t catch any of it except the word ‘wool.’ Wonder if he sits up all night with his Trilby and his Turks, summoning spirits! He’s been fearfully ragged by the rest of the marsh-men, by the way. Denny left a parcel at Thweng, the other day, which turned out to be some old bathing-togs he had dug up somewhere!”

The train moved off, and he walked a few yards with it.

“You won’t be up again just yet, I suppose?”

Bluecaster shook his head.

“Not to stop. I’ll run up for the Show, and I’ll be home for the audits as usual. I’m shooting a good bit, and then going abroad. Christmas in Cairo. But I’ll be back altogether”—he leaned out and called as the train gathered speed, his expression half-laughing, half-earnest—“I’ll be back—in March!”

Lanty found his guests reinforced by Wiggie when he got home at last. They were seated round a table in the drawing-room, engaged in an impromptu foxhunt evolved by the singer, by means of dice, a surprising collection of knick-knacks, and the pot dogs off the mantelpiece. He had spent the day in Manchester with Hamer, and looked paler than ever and desperately tired, but he hunted with the infectious zest of a Troughton or a Peel. Even the host, standing with his back to the cheerless grate, smiled as he watched the absurd game.

The room was as hideously comfortless as ever, and smelt abominably of stocks. Tea had been taken away, and it had not occurred to Helwise to offer him a fresh brew. A détour upstairs before entering, prompted by some inexplicable shyness, had shown him his dressing-table standing in water. Evidently the window had been open when the factotum wielded his weekly hose. On the hall-floor he found a telegram requiring immediate answer, and an envelope containing money had slipped off the table into Helwise’s umbrella. Yet he felt less irritated than usual as he stood on his mockery of a hearth, while Wiggie, with a throw of double sixes, sprang Climber over an imitation brass inkstand, a framed funeral card and a mug from Morecambe. Helwise looked happy, he thought, tossing dice with breathless intensity. He did a great deal more for her, every day, than this foolish young man was doing at the moment, but it never evoked that spirit of flagrant joy. He realised suddenly that, in spite of her rattle-headed irresponsibility, she had something he had not—a youth of soul at once a blessing and a curse. Perhaps he had taken her too seriously, demanded too much of her, not in practice, but in temperament. The Shaws and Wiggie asked nothing of her except to be her aimless and absurd self. Even Harriet bullied but protected and liked her. He alone kept her, made things easy for her, and found her a pricking thorn. He shrugged his shoulders. After all, it was his dressing-table.

Harriet had grabbed the only true hound in the pack, a daintily-finished model that Bluecaster had brought Helwise from Grasmere, and was playing in her usual fashion, barking orders and rattling the dice like an enemy’s brains. After Lanty came in, she barked rather louder than before, especially at Wiggie, for whom she seemed to have a measureless contempt. Nobody noticed it, though, but Wiggie himself, with all his little thread-ropes of intuition flung out like so many cables.

Dandy was having very bad luck, laboriously boosting a pincushion-backed dachshund over a pink mountain of Lanty’s best blotting-paper. She wooed the fates with a variety of chants and curses, but to no purpose. For her the dice would not fall. Her cheeks were as pink as the paper by the time Pincushion’s head came over the hill.

“He despises me for being a wretched town-person!” she said dismally. “Wiggie’s getting on all right, but then Wiggie’s a magician. All hairy and feathery and furry things love him. We can’t keep the birds out of his bedroom.”

“Birds in your room mean bad luck!” Harriet observed brutally, slinging the dice-box at the magician, and adding “Butter-thumbs!” when he missed it. “Rotten luck—illness—death! You’d better be making your will.”

A fresh shadow drifted almost imperceptibly across Wiggie’s tired face. Dandy looked up quickly, but, as once before, he smiled her into holding her peace, and with a sharp fling of the dice she scrambled Pincushion down the mountain and over a wall of matches.

He took heart of grace after that, and began to forge rapidly ahead, passing Helwise’s pug-nosed St. Bernard and Wiggie’s black and tan with the Pomeranian tail. Harriet’s hound was leading easily. Her fierce throws seemed to frighten the dice into showing their most lucrative faces. The fox—as represented by an ancient pen-wiper lately chewed by mice—was in imminent danger.

Pincushion gained, however, straining clumsily after Cragsman’s delicate grace. The others withdrew, leaving them to fight it out, and then a curious thing happened. The moment Pincushion’s head drew level with Cragsman’s lean flank, Harriet began to throw blanks. Cragsman stayed stubbornly glued to the same spot, while Dandy’s monstrosity, in a succession of twos, finished the course and claimed the quarry. Harriet reached for her gloves and announced that she must be going. Dandy stood up, too, still looking at the game.

“That was queer, wasn’t it?” she asked. “The finish, I mean? Cragsman stopped playing!”

“The luck changed,” Lancaster said briefly. “All the same, they say in the fells that if a mongrel joins in the chase the pure-bred hound drops the fox instantly. No wonder Cragsman took steck at that overfed pincushion of yours!”

“I know a song about that,” Wiggie put in. “Yes, I shall say it if I like!” He began to quote softly—

Harriet glared at him, dragging on her hard gloves in ruthless snatches, but as he finished he lifted his eyes to hers with a smile so full of warm goodwill that her own dropped. Wiggie knew what the ugly room meant to her, and the ridiculous game and the taciturn man, where nobody else had even so much as guessed. But then Wiggie was a magician, so Dandy had said, and magicians don’t count.

Dusk was dropping as they came out of the house, and along the quiet fields had risen the heart-high, ghostly barriers of the mist. A far-off touch of frost was in the air, and the clean smell of a bonfire soared with its faint, pale smoke beyond a distant wall.

“I’ll walk over to Watters with you, if I may,” Lancaster said, groping in the hall for his cap. “I’ve papers for Mr. Shaw.”

“But what about Harriet?” Helwise fluttered. “You must see her home first, Lancelot, and then you might take Mrs. Shaw that crochet pattern she wants for my Deep-Sea Fishermen—or was it the Night-Cap Club? Eight ch., 1 d.c. into sixth ch., back, 2 ch., 1 d.c.—perhaps I’d better write it down. Of course Harriet mustn’t go home alone!”

He apologised at once. Harriet generally cycled over, and he associated her instinctively with the steel steed that turned and rent his walls. However, she brushed him aside with scant ceremony.

“Rot! Of course I can. I’m used to paddling about by myself all over the place, and if you think I’ll feel any braver for having a land-lunatic mooning along beside me, grunting about turnips, you’re jolly well mistaken! It’s no use arguing, because I don’t mean to be bothered with you, so you can just crochet yourself over to Watters and have done with it.”

She saluted the party with a side way jerk of her head in her best ploughboy manner, and strode off, watched by her host with annoyance, and something else, altogether different, that held him back from pursuit. Courtesy conquered, however, and he started after her, only to be stopped by Wiggie. “Let me!” he said, gripping his arm. “I’ll catch you up later”—and sped away on Harriet’s swinging trail. The misty air caught him by the throat as he ran. It had been stuffy in the stock-scented room, and he had no wrap of any kind. Perhaps that was why he coughed as he came up. Perhaps he knew that she strained hungry ears to his step, and wished to spare her even a momentary disappointment. In any case, he was certainly not well received.

“You go back!” she snapped, turning on him. “You’re an insult—a howling insult! D’you think I want protecting by a thing that sings?”

“I play draughts, too, you know,” he reminded her meekly, and she laughed grudgingly and moved on again, her escort with her. And as he went he talked—strange talk that was new to her, talk that set the torch of fancy flaring through the mist. Vaguely through her dogged resistance there stole a sense of protection that was of the soul. Physically, indeed, she had no fear, as she had said, but the manly stride had covered an effort to escape the clinging pain of her own heart. Around her in the dusk Wiggie wove his net of comfort, of beauty, of magic kindliness, and by the time he let her in at her own gate, the first bitterness was past. To-morrow she would remember that he sang and coughed, and looked as though he needed cod-liver-oil and malt. To-night she only knew that an angel had walked with her.

Through the dewy garden Lanty led his guest past the ivied seat and the pink fingers of the cherry-tree, and so out by the little stile under the mighty shadow of Bluecaster walls. As they passed the great, wrought gates, already closed for the night, he caught a glimpse of the house itself, its bare flagstaff proclaiming mutely that the master was from home. Then they were under the walls again, sunk in an avenue of lime, and presently in the Lane.

There was the whole of wonder through the Green Gates to-night. The chestnuts were already turning to the pure crimson that comes with the first frost. Already, in the little plantation backing Rakestraw, the beeches had red at their feet. A late harvest-field, stooked and waiting, lay wanly yellow under the white over-world between dark building and close-laid fence. There was a moon coming, a big moon slowly topping the hill, and when it came the hill would go black, and Rakestraw lights would beckon like swung lanterns of horn. His first look was for his Mountain, as usual, but it was not there. From the day of the marsh-meeting he never saw his Ghost-Mountain again, until his life had been broken utterly and utterly re-made.

Dandy was thinking of Harriet as they walked in the quiet of the Lane. Both her sudden defeat and her violent independence had held a touch of pathos. She asked Lanty how long he had known her.

“All her life, or thereabouts. Her people belong here—good old yeoman stock, the best in the land. The backbone of England, some of the books call it! It’s true, too. That’s why Harriet’s so dead sure of herself—she’s on her own ground. She runs her own farm with the help of a good head man. I got him for her. It’s quite a model place; you ought to see it. There isn’t much about farming she doesn’t know. She’s a good hand with a plough, too, and can swing a scythe with anybody. Oh yes, Harriet’s all right in her own way! It’s only her manners that are wrong, and goodness knows I’ve no need to talk! She bullies you no end, but she’s absolutely straight—couldn’t cheat if she tried. We’ve never been very thick, she and I, but she gets on with my aunt all right, and she’s one of our own people, and that means a lot, after all!”

He laughed as he finished, surprised to find himself so urgent in Harriet’s praise. He was thinking purely of his offended guest, but his companion felt, as she had felt at Watters, the intangible barrier of outlook rise between them. She had better manners than Harriet—yes—but she knew nothing whatever about a farm. She was better-tempered, but she couldn’t tell the signs of the weather. And she was decidedly better-looking, but she couldn’t bumble or scythe or pick out a prize hunter. And all that this first autumn night meant to Lanty, Harriet knew as she couldn’t possibly know. She was outside.

The smell of the bonfires came again—the fine, pungent smell that is incense in country nostrils. Lancaster lifted his head as he caught it.

“That’s real back-end!” he exclaimed. “Unless you’ve lived in the country all your life, you can’t know what it means. You need only shut your eyes, and it paints little pictures for you. I can see things I loved when I was a boy: shadowy autumn evenings, driving home with my father from Witham, the long, white road and the black hedges and the dim land. Children running in to bed, and the cattle close under the fence, and no birds singing—all the field-things resting. The horse’s hoofs going clip-clop, a bit tired, and myself snuggled under my father’s elbow, half-asleep. The smell of the bonfires all the way—frost coming—leaves dropping—the lights showing one by one, and then the quiet night. The smell of the bonfires all the way, and then—home.”

He was quite evidently talking to himself only, and again isolation turned her chill. Harriet would have known what he meant. Harriet, who nodded like a ploughboy, was born to the mysteries of bonfires and the back-end.

They reached the Third Gate in Lancaster’s Lane, and there a big bank of mist laid its ghost-hands over their eyes, shutting out the scene beyond. Below it, on the soft, wet, vivid grass, was a fairy-ring. Dandy asked the meaning of it.

“Fungus,” he explained, “but who wants to believe that? Do you know that picture of Butler’s—‘Pixie-Led’—the farm lad caught by the fairies in the gloaming, with the mist-wreaths twining round his knees, and the lights of the farm and the low, red sunset behind? He looks such a clumsy, bewildered giant, whirled round by the mischievous shreds of elves! I wonder if he remembered or forgot? They say if you dance with the fairies, you’re never the same again.”

“It’s worth trying!” she put in half-mischievously. “They might teach me what the bonfires mean.”

He shook his head.

“That’s heritage—and association. By the time you’re old you’ll understand, if you go on wanting to. It’s the having grown with you, the being part of you, that fills the country with glamour. Rain in the night, the rolling of cart-wheels in the early morn, hounds giving tongue in a soft November—things like that—they’re riches, handfuls of gold, when you understand!” He dropped suddenly from the heights to tug at the ancient bars before them. “Time there was some new timber in here, by the look of it! This rotten stuff’ll hardly last the winter.”

The golden lamp of the moon was up by now, shredding the barrier into misty scarves and skeins, and showing green-shaded fields where turnips and potatoes were grown alongside. Every shadow grew pitilessly sharp, and from the black hill-sides the lights sprang warm.

“I like to watch the windows open their eyes,” Lancaster said. “They’re so quiet, and yet there’s all life behind them. Tragedy, often. At Oxenfoot the old man’s dying by half-inches. Up at Topthorns they’re slipping slowly down the fell into the workhouse. It’s nobody’s fault, and nobody can help. The young folk at Cowgill—bad hats, every one of them!—make the place a hell among them, with the hate and the quarrelling and the mean striving to best the rest. Better things, too—men and women sticking to in the teeth of bad luck and bad health, paying their rent somehow, and keeping a stiff neck whatever comes along. All life—and yet the lights so quiet and steady, just as if peace were the real thing and the trouble behind only an ugly shadow. You don’t remember it, outside. You think of folk sitting happy round a fire or at their evening meal, or slipping away quietly to sleep. You think of home.”

Over Dandy, listening, came a sudden longing for Halsted, cheerful, rampant, unmagicked, clean away from this mist-wrapped lane and the man who made the underneath things seem so real. They were not hers and therefore she feared them, and though they were not even looking at her, cared nothing for her existence, she ran away from them in spirit as fast as she could scamper.

“It doesn’t mean home to me!” she broke out with reckless hurry. “At my home there’s a blaze from hundreds of tantalums, and there are motor-horns tooting on the drive and crowds of people coming up the steps, laughing and talking. There’s dancing in the drawing-room, and snooker in the billiard-room and rinking in the hall. In your house there’s a bowl of milk and a candle and a smoky chimney and a hard bed”—she was half-hysterical, by now—“but in mine there are spring-mattresses and gramophones and Thermos flasks and electric hair-curlers——” She stopped, laughing unsteadily. “You’ve made me really home-sick for the first time since I came to Watters!”

He turned from the gap, rebuffed and ashamed.

“Afraid I’ve bored you!” he apologised bluntly. “Why didn’t you stop me yarning? Harriet said I’d get mooning about turnips, you know. I’ve only one subject. You’ll soon learn to steer clear of it! That’s Wigmore behind us, I should say.”

Wiggie joined them, trying very hard to put a morning freshness into his dragging step, and because Dandy had fallen silent, exerted himself to bridge the gulf. He was quite willing to make an ass of himself over the rotation of crops, if it saved her the burden of conversation.

Arrived at Watters, there was no getting away from Hamer’s hospitality, and Lancaster stayed to dinner with a sardonic consciousness of cold sausage and scrambled eggs awaiting him at Crabtree. They were still at table, however, when the lights of his dog-cart flashed on the windows, summoning him to a fire at Far Borrans. Hamer and Dandy followed him out to listen to Armer’s explanation. It was the hay, it seemed—like enough the late crop had been got in too fast—and the Hall itself was in danger. There was a big crowd of helpers gone up, and the fire-engine was out from Witham, as well as the small one from the House. Armer, full of theories and excitement, had thought the master ought to know at once. He had brought the trap in case he was tired; incidentally, that he might himself assist at the pageant.

Lanty climbed in, said good-bye, and clicked to Blacker, but from an overgrown rambler a thick briar reached out and held him fast. Hamer laughed as he loosed him with difficulty.

“My little girl says Watters has the choosing of our friends. It’s made a pretty tight grab at you, anyway! I hope you’ll take it as an omen. See here—can’t I run you to this farm in the car? I could have her out in five minutes.”

“Thanks, but it’s up the Dale,” Lancaster said. “No motor-road. Narrow. Bad surface. Dangerous to-night, with so many traps going up. I suppose you wouldn’t care to come with me?”

Hamer shook his head.

“Not unless I’d be of use! It hurts me to see good stuff going by the board. I’d be dreaming all night it was Watters, and waking Mother twisting ropes out of the sheets! I’ll have a Minimax in every corner after this, won’t I, Dandy Anne?”

He linked his arm in hers, and they followed the trap as it spun out into the main road, and turned quickly into the Lane. Now and again, over and through the hedges, they caught the gleam of the lamps; and once Lanty’s head and shoulders stood out black on the golden air. In the drawing-room at Watters, Wiggie used the perfect artistry of his demi-voix to set Mrs. Hamer nodding over 1 d.c. between sixth and seventh d.trs.

Hamer sighed in the Lane, and Dandy knew he was away on his tram-horse hobby once more.

“I could have lent a hand with a bucket!” he said regretfully, “though they’ve likely more than enough men on the job already. I could have sent the hat round, too, though perhaps they’d not say thank you for that sort of thing, up here, and of course they’re insured. But I’m a big weight. I’d have made a difference to the going, and Lancaster was in a hurry. But I’d have liked to lend a hand!”

Dandy was not listening. Their wandering had brought them to the Gate of the Fairy-Ring, and she drew him up to the fence. There she told him something of the walk home and the talk that had roused her to revolt.

“I’m a Halstedite still!” she said ruefully. “I’ve no right to Watters until lean make little pictures out of the smell of burnt wood and the flicker of a farthing dip—until sight and sound and scent are all mixed more or less into one. At present, when I wake to a slow Scotch drizzle, I don’t smell violets, or see mushrooms rushing up, or hear cabbages taking long drinks, but I’ve got to learn. Do you think I might ask the fairies to put me up to a thing or two—what ‘fog’ means, for instance, and ‘hoggin’ taties,’ and ‘a good tommy-spot’; and how you ‘kill’ hay, and why the weather is always wrong for turnips? Let me through, Daddy dear, and I’ll see if they’ve anything to say to me!”

Hamer slipped a bar and let her slide past, and with a laugh she stepped on limber feet into the circle, a fairy-thing herself in her white gown, with the yellow light on her uncovered hair. But even as she caught her dress in her fingers and pointed a foot, she checked, her lips parted, her ear bent to listen. Lancaster’s trap, long lost in the myriad turns of the Lane, had emerged into the open road, and the horse’s hoofs, quickened to a sharp trot, rang from hill to hill. There are things to be read from a hoof-beat in the country quiet. Up in the Dales, when a man gallops, the farmers come to their doors, knowing he rides for succour. Lanty’s trot spelt urgency, and more than one voice hailed him as he passed. They heard him answer without stopping; saw the far-off lamps flung on the dark borders; heard the hoofs dwindle and quicken and finally die.

Hamer’s wise eyes were on Dandy as she stood, her head stooped for the last message. She had forgotten him as well as the fairies, and her face, in its unconscious revelation, was neither that of a spirit nor of the little girl he loved, but the face of a woman come into her kingdom. With a passionate sense of loss, he strode over and lifted her out of the Ring.