came rocketing out of the hole, and then, if the sun
was right, you sat in the midst of rainbows--a thing Nance had always
longed to do since she clapped her baby hands at her first one. But the
Vicar never did that.

And once, in quest of the how and the why, Nance swam into the
blow-hole's cave at a very low tide, and its size and the dome of its
roof, compared with the narrowness of its entrance, amazed her, but she
did not stay long for it gave her the creeps.

These were some of the ways by which little Nance grew to a larger
estate than most of her fellows, and all these things helped to make her
what she came to be.

When she grew old enough to assist in the farm, new realms of delight
opened to her. Chickens, calves, lambs, piglets--she foster-mothered
them all and knew no weariness in all such duties which were rather
pleasures.

It was a wounded rabbit, limping into cover under a tangle of gorse and
blackberry bashes, that discovered to her the entrance to the series of
little chambers and passages that led right through the headland to the
side looking into Port Gorey. Which most satisfactory hiding-place she
and Bernel turned to good account on many an occasion when brother Tom's
oppression passed endurance.

It had taken time, and much screwing up of childish courage, to explore
the whole of that extraordinary little burrow, and it was not the work
of a day.

When Nance crept along the little run made by many generations of
rabbits, she found that it led finally into a dark crack in the rock,
and, squeezing through that, she was in a small dark chamber which smelt
strongly of her friends.

As soon as her eyes recovered from the sudden change from blazing
sunlight to almost pitch darkness, she perceived a small black opening
at the far end, and looking through it she saw a lightening of the
darkness still farther in which tempted her on.

It was a tough scramble even for her, and the closeness of the rocks and
the loneliness weighed upon her somewhat. But there was that glimmer of
light ahead and she must know what it was, and so she climbed and
wriggled over and under the huge splintered rocks till she came to the
light, like a tiny slit of a window far above her head, and still there
were passages leading on.

Next day, with Bernel and a tiny crasset lamp for company, she explored
the burrow to its utmost limits and adopted it at once as their refuge
and stronghold. And thereafter they spent m