country-side. The moor ran here into
a valley between two lines of hill, a cup bounded on three sides by the
hills and on the fourth by the sea. In the spring it flamed, a bowl of
fire, with the gorse; now it stood grim and naked to all the winds,
blue in the distant hills, a deep red to the right, where the plough
had been, brown and grey on the moor itself running down to the sea.

It was full of deserted things, as is ever the way with the true
Cornwall. On the hill were the Stones sharp against the sky-line;
lower down, in a bend of the valley, stood the ruins of a mine, the
shaft and chimney, desolately solitary, looking like the pillars of
some ancient temple that had been fashioned by uncouth worshippers. In
the valley itself stood the stones of what was once a chapel--built,
perhaps, for the men of the desolate mine, inhabited now by rabbits and
birds, its windows spaces where the winds that swept the moor could
play their eternal, restless games.

On a day of clouds there was no colour on the moor, but when the sun
was out great bands of light swept its surface, playing on the Stones
and changing them to marble, striking colour from the mine and filling
the chapel with gold. But the sun did not reach that valley on many
days when the rest of the world was alight--it was as if it respected
the loneliness of its monuments and the pathos of them.

Harry sat on the side of the hill, below the Stones, and watched the
sea. At times a mist came and hid it; on sunny days, when the sky was
intensely blue, there hung a dazzling haze like a golden veil and he
could only tell that the sea was there by the sudden gleam of tiny
white horses, flashing for a moment on the mirror of blue and shining
through the haze; sometimes a gull swerved through the air above his
head as though a wave had lost its bounds and, for sheer joy of the
beautiful day, had flung itself tossing and wheeling into the air.

But to-day was a day of wind and rapidly sailing clouds, and myriads of
white horses curved and tossed and vanished over the shifting colours
of the sea; there were wonderful shadows of dark blue and purple and
green of such depth that they seemed unfathomable.

Suddenly he saw Mary coming towards him. A scarf--green like the green
of the sea--was tied round her hat and under her chin and floated
behind her. Her dress was blown against her body, and she walked as
though she loved the battling with the wind. Her face wa