side the picture of an Indian queen and two blackamoor
children, all with striped parasols, walking together across a
desert. The queen on one side wore a scarlet turban and a blue robe;
but the queen on the other side wore a blue turban and a scarlet
robe. Taffy dodged from side to side, comparing them, and had not
made up his mind which he liked best when Humility called him indoors
to tea.

They had ham and eggs with their tea, which they took in a great
hurry; and then his grandmother was lifted into the cart and laid on
a bed of clean straw beside the boxes, and he and his mother
clambered up in front. So they started again, his father walking at
the horse's head. They took the road toward the sunset. As the dusk
fell closer around, Mr. Raymond lit a horn lantern and carried it
before them. The rays of it danced and wheeled upon the hedges and
gorse bushes. Taffy began to feel sleepy, though it was long before
his usual bedtime. The air seemed to weigh his eyelids down. Or was
it a sound lulling him? He looked up suddenly. His mother's arm was
about him. Stars flashed above, and a glimmer fell on her gentle
face--a dew of light, as it were. Her dark eyes appeared darker than
usual as she leaned and drew her shawl over his shoulder.

Ahead, the rays of the lantern kept up their dance, but they flared
now and again upon stone hedges built in zigzag layers, and upon
unknown feathery bushes, intensely green and glistening like metal.

The cart jolted and the lantern swung to a soundless tune that filled
the night. When Taffy listened it ceased; when he ceased listening,
it began again.

The lantern stopped its dance and stood still over a ford of black
water. The cart splashed into it and became a ship, heaving and
lurching over a soft, irregular floor that returned no sound.
But suddenly the ship became a cart again, and stood still before a
house with a narrow garden-path and a light streaming along it from
an open door.

His father lifted him down; his mother took his hand. They seemed to
wade together up that stream of light. Then came a staircase and
room with a bed in it, which, oddly enough, turned out to be his own.
He stared at the pink roses on the curtains. Yes; certainly it was
his own bed. And satisfied of this, he nestled down in the pillows
and slept, to the long cadence of the sea.

CHAPTER IV.

THE RUNNING SANDS.

He awoke to find the sun shining in at his window. A