ightly evocations.

"Who lives in that little house on the island?" she called out to
Marion.

"The one on the Saltings? No one. It has been empty for forty years. But
when I was a child George Luck still lived there. George Luck, the last
great wizard in England."

"A wizard forty years ago! Well, I suppose parts of England are very
backward. You've got such a miserable system of education. What sort of
magic did he do?"

"Oh, he gave charms to cure sick cattle, and sailors' wives used to come
to him for news of their absent husbands, and he used to make them look
in a full tub of water, and they used to see little pictures of what the
men were doing at the time." She laughed over her shoulder at Ellen.
"You see, other women before us have been reactionary."

"Reactionary?" repeated Ellen.

"They have let their lives revolve round men," said Marion teasingly,
and Ellen returned her laughter. They were both in high spirits because
of this wind that was salt and cold and yet not savage. Their glowing
bodies reminded them that the prime necessities of life are earth and
air, and the chance to eat well as they had eaten, and that in being in
love they were the victims of a classic predicament, the current
participators in the perpetual imbroglio with spiritual things that
makes man the most ridiculous of animals.

They were walking on the level now, on a path beside the railway-line,
again in the great green platter of the marshes. The sea-wall, which ran
in wide crimps a field's width away on the other side of the line, might
have been the rim of the world had it not been for the forest of masts
showing above it. The clouds declared themselves the inhabitants of the
sky and not its stuff by casting separate shadows, and the space they
moved in seemed a reservoir of salt light, of fluid silence, under which
it was good to live. Yet it was not silence, for there came perpetually
that leisurely, wet cry.

"What are those birds? They make a lovely sound," asked Ellen, dancing.

"Those are the redshanks. They're wading-birds. When Richard comes he
will take you on the sea-wall and show you the redshanks in the little
streams among the mud. They are such queer streams. Up towards Canfleet
there's a waterfall in the mud, with a fall of several feet. It looks
queer. These marshes are queer. And they're so lonely. Nobody ever comes
here now except the men to see to the cattle. Even though the railway
runs through, they'