said:

"What's the gipsy bogle, Megan?"

She looked up, startled.

"He brings bad things."

"Surely you don't believe in ghosts?"

"I hope I will never see him."

"Of course you won't. There aren't such things. What old Jim saw was a
pony."

"No! There are bogies in the rocks; they are the men who lived long
ago."

"They aren't gipsies, anyway; those old men were dead long before
gipsies came."

She said simply: "They are all bad."

"Why? If there are any, they're only wild, like the rabbits. The flowers
aren't bad for being wild; the thorn trees were never planted--and you
don't mind them. I shall go down at night and look for your bogie, and
have a talk with him."

"Oh, no! Oh, no!"

"Oh, yes! I shall go and sit on his rock."

She clasped her hands together: "Oh, please!"

"Why! What 'does it matter if anything happens to me?"

She did not answer; and in a sort of pet he added:

"Well, I daresay I shan't see him, because I suppose I must be off
soon."

"Soon?"

"Your aunt won't want to keep me here."

"Oh, yes! We always let lodgings in summer."

Fixing his eyes on her face, he asked:

"Would you like me to stay?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to say a prayer for you to-night!"

She flushed crimson, frowned, and went out of the room. He sat, cursing
himself, till his tea was stewed. It was as if he had hacked with his
thick boots at a clump of bluebells. Why had he said such a silly
thing? Was he just a towny college ass like Robert Garton, as far from
understanding this girl?

Ashurst spent the next week confirming the restoration of his leg, by
exploration of the country within easy reach. Spring was a revelation to
him this year. In a kind of intoxication he would watch the pink-white
buds of some backward beech tree sprayed up in the sunlight against the
deep blue sky, or the trunks and limbs of the few Scotch firs, tawny in
violent light, or again, on the moor, the gale-bent larches which had
such a look of life when the wind streamed in their young green, above
the rusty black underboughs. Or he would lie on the banks, gazing at the
clusters of dog-violets, or up in the dead bracken, fingering the pink,
transparent buds of the dewberry, while the cuckoos called and yafes
laughed, or a lark, from very high, dripped its beads of song. It was
certainly different from any spring he had ever known, for spring was
within him, not without. In the daytime he hardly saw the family; and
when Me