er
of white. Gilian looked at them and saw them the birds of night and sea,
the birds of prey, the howlets of the brine, flying large and powerful
throughout the under-sky that is salt and swinging and never lit by moon
or star. And as the boats followed each other out of the bay, a gallant
company, the crews leaned on tiller or on mast and sang their Gaelic
_iorrams_ that ever have the zest of the oar, the melancholy of the
wave.

As it were in a pious surrender to the influence of the hour, he and
the girl walked slowly, silently, by the wayside, busy with their own
imaginings. They were all alone.

Beyond the Boshang Gate is an entrance to the policies, the parks, the
gardens, of the Duke, standing open with a welcome, a trim roadway edged
with bush and tree. Into it Nan and Gilian walked, almost heedless, it
might seem, of each other's presence, she plucking wild flowers as she
went from bush to bush, humming the refrain of the fishers' songs, he
with his eyes wide open looking straight before him yet with some vague
content to have her there for his companion.

When they spoke again they were in the cloistered wood, the sea hidden
by the massive trees.

"I will show you my heron's nest," said Gilian, anxious to add to the
riches the ramble would confer on her.

She was delighted. Gilian at school had the reputation of knowing
the most wonderful things of the woods, and few were taken into his
confidence.

He led her a little from the path to the base of a tall tree with its
trunk for many yards up as bare as a pillar.

"There it is," he said, pointing upward to a knot of gathered twigs
swaying in the upper branches.

"Oh! is it so high as that?" she cried, with disappointment. "What is
the use of showing me that? I cannot see the inside and the birds."

"But there are no birds now," said Gilian; "they are flown long ago.
Still I'm sure you can easily fancy them there. I see them quite
plainly. There are three eggs, green-blue like the sky up the glen, and
now--now there are three grey hairy little birds with tufts on their
heads. Do you not see their beaks opening?"

"Of course I don't," said Nan impatiently, straining her eyes for the
tree-top. "If they are all flown how can I see them?"

Gilian was disappointed with her. "But you think you see them, you think
very hard," he said, "and if you think very hard they will be there
quite true."

Nan stamped her foot angrily. "You are daft," said she. "I