There! I won't shoot another
bird--and that settles it!"

"Halleluia!" said a tiny voice somewhere above him.

The voice, though' tiny, was shrill and positive. Young John
recognised, and yet did not recognise it. He stared up at the wall
of the old mine-house from which it had seemed to speak, but he could
see no one. Next he thought that the word must have come from his
own heart, answering a sudden gush of warmth and happiness that set
his whole body glowing. It was as if winter had changed to summer,
within him and without, and all in a moment. He blinked in the
stronger sunshine, and felt it warm upon his eyelids.

"Halleluia!" said the voice again. It certainly came from the wall.
He looked again, and, scanning it in this strange, new light, was
aware of a wren in one of the crevices.

"Will he? will he?" piped another voice, pretty close behind his ear.
Young John, now he had learnt that wrens can talk, had no difficulty
in recognising this other voice: it was the half-hearted note of the
titlark. He turned over on his side and peered into the shadow of
the Main-Stone; but in vain, for the titlark is a hesitating, unhappy
little soul that never quite dares to make up its mind. It used to
be the friend of a race that inhabited Cornwall ages ago. It builds
in their cromlechs, and its song remembers them. It is the bird,
too, in whose nest the cuckoo lays; so it knows all about losing
one's children and being dispossessed.

"We will give him a gift," chirruped the wren, "and send him about
his business. He is the first man that has the sense to leave us to
ours."

"But will he?--will he?" the titlark piped back ghostlily. "One can
never be sure. I have known men long, long before ever you came
here. I knew King Arthur. This rock was his table, and he dined
here with seven other kings on the night after they had beaten the
Danes at Vellandruchar. I hid under the stone and listened to them
passing the cups, and between their talk you could hear the stream
running down the valley--it turned the two mill-wheels, Vellandruchar
and Vellandreath, with blood that night. Even at daybreak it ran
high over the legs of the choughs walking on the beach below--that is
why the choughs go red-legged to this day. . . . They are few now,
but then they were many: and next spring they came and built in the
rigging of the Danes' ships, left ashore--for not a Dane had escaped.
But King Arthur had gone his way. A