t of a new-born lamb (the first of the season) caused
great excitement. Some of the girls, who loved old superstitions,
pretended to divine their luck by whether it was standing facing them or
otherwise when they first caught a glimpse of it; but, the general
verdict deciding that it was exactly sideways, they found it impossible
to give any accurate predictions for the future.

"You'd better keep to something vague that can be construed two ways,
like the Delphic Oracle or _Old Moore's Almanac_," laughed Ulyth.

Once past the farm the walk began to grow specially interesting. The
deep lane, only intended for use in summer, when carts brought loads of
hay from the marsh, was turned by winter rains into the bed of a stream.
The girls picked their way at first along the bank, then by jumping from
stone to stone, but finally the water grew so deep it was impossible to
proceed farther without wading. They had been in the same emergency
before, so it did not daunt their enthusiasm. One and all they scaled
the high, wide, loosely built wall to their left. Here they could walk
as on a terrace, with the flooded lane on one side and on the other the
rushing Porth Powys stream, making its hurrying way to join the Craigwen
River. It was not at all an easy progress, for the wall was overgrown
with hazel bushes and a tangle of brambles, and its unmortared surface
had deep holes, into which the unwary might put a foot. For several
hundred yards they struggled on, decidedly to the detriment of their
clothing, and rather encumbered by their baskets; then at last they
reached the particular corner they were seeking, and scrambled down into
the meadow.

This field was such a favourite with the girls that they had come to
regard it almost as their own property. Miss Teddington had found it out
many years ago, and its discovery was always considered a point in her
roll of merit. It was an expanse of grassy land, bounded on one side by
the Porth Powys stream and on the other by a deep dyke, and leading down
over a rushy tract to the reed-grown banks of the river. The view over
the many miles of marshland, with the blue mountains rising up behind
and the silvery gleam of the river, was superb. The brown, quivering,
feathery reeds made a glorious foreground for the amber and vivid green
of the banks farther on; and the gorgeous sky effects of rolling clouds,
glinting sun, and patches of bluest heaven were like the beginning of
one of St. Jo