lack hair down on to the blue of
her linen dress. She answered, without turning:

"Have you ever seen, on jubilee nights, bonfire to bonfire, from hill to
hill, to the end of the land? This is the first lighted."

Nedda felt something clutch her heart. What was that figure in blue?
Priestess? Prophetess? And for a moment the girl felt herself swept into
the vision those dark glowing eyes were seeing; some violent, exalted,
inexorable, flaming vision. Then something within her revolted, as
though one had tried to hypnotize her into seeing what was not true;
as though she had been forced for the moment to look, not at what was
really there, but at what those eyes saw projected from the soul behind
them. And she said quietly:

"I don't believe, Aunt Kirsteen. I don't really believe. I think it must
go out."

Kirsteen turned.

"You are like your father," she said--"a doubter."

Nedda shook her head.

"I can't persuade myself to see what isn't there. I never can, Aunt
Kirsteen."

Without reply, save a quiver of her brows, Kirsteen went back into the
house. And Nedda stayed on the pebbled path before the cottage, unhappy,
searching her own soul. Did she fail to see because she was afraid to
see, because she was too dull to see; or because, as she had said, there
was really nothing there--no flames to leap from hill to hill, no
lift, no tearing in the sky that hung over the land? And she thought:
'London--all those big towns, their smoke, the things they make, the
things we want them to make, that we shall always want them to make.
Aren't they there? For every laborer who's a slave Dad says there are
five town workers who are just as much slaves! And all those Bigwigs
with their great houses, and their talk, and their interest in keeping
things where they are! Aren't they there? I don't--I can't believe
anything much can happen, or be changed. Oh! I shall never see visions,
and dream dreams!' And from her heart she sighed.

In the meantime Derek and Sheila were going their round on bicycles, to
stiffen the backs of the laborers. They had hunted lately, always in
a couple, desiring no complications, having decided that it was less
likely to provoke definite assault and opposition from the farmers. To
their mother was assigned all correspondence; to themselves the verbal
exhortations, the personal touch. It was past noon, and they were
already returning, when they came on the char-a-bancs containing the
head of the s