denly fling his feet and his head every which way. An
active nature, romantic, without being dreamy and book-loving, is not too
prone to the attacks of love; such a one is likely to survive unscathed
to a maturer age. But Nedda had seduced him, partly by the appeal of her
touchingly manifest love and admiration, and chiefly by her eyes, through
which he seemed to see such a loyal, and loving little soul looking. She
had that indefinable something which lovers know that they can never
throw away. And he had at once made of her, secretly, the crown of his
active romanticism--the lady waiting for the spoils of his lance. Queer
is the heart of a boy--strange its blending of reality and idealism!

Climbing at a great pace, he reached Malvern Beacon just as it came dawn,
and stood there on the top, watching. He had not much aesthetic sense;
but he had enough to be impressed by the slow paling of the stars over
space that seemed infinite, so little were its dreamy confines visible in
the May morning haze, where the quivering crimson flags and spears of
sunrise were forging up in a march upon the sky. That vision of the
English land at dawn, wide and mysterious, hardly tallied with Mr.
Cuthcott's view of a future dedicate to Park and Garden City. While
Derek stood there gazing, the first lark soared up and began its ecstatic
praise. Save for that song, silence possessed all the driven dark, right
out to the Severn and the sea, and the fastnesses of the Welsh hills, and
the Wrekin, away in the north, a black point in the gray. For a moment
dark and light hovered and clung together. Would victory wing back into
night or on into day? Then, as a town is taken, all was over in one
overmastering rush, and light proclaimed. Derek tightened his belt and
took a bee-line down over the slippery grass. He meant to reach the
cottage of the laborer Tryst before that early bird was away to the
fields. He meditated as he went. Bob Tryst was all right! If they only
had a dozen or two like him! A dozen or two whom they could trust, and
who would trust each other and stand firm to form the nucleus of a
strike, which could be timed for hay harvest. What slaves these laborers
still were! If only they could be relied on, if only they would stand
together! Slavery! It WAS slavery; so long as they could be turned out
of their homes at will in this fashion. His rebellion against the
conditions of their lives, above all against the ma