ns,
looked out from a world of flowers and she cried between laughing and
weeping, "Oh, Gerard, oh, you're drowning me!"

"It's the April floods," shouted Young Gerard, "and I must drown with
you, Thea, Thea, Thea!" And he cast himself down beside her, and
clasped her amid all the blossoming, and with his head on her shoulder
kissed and kissed her till he was breathless and she as pale as the
flowers that smothered their kisses.

And then suddenly he folded her in the green mantle, blossoms and all,
and sprang up and lifted her to his breast till she lay like a child in
the arms of its mother; and he picked up the lantern and said, "Now we
will go away for ever."

"Where are we going?" she whispered with shining eyes.

"To the Wildbrooks," he said.

"To drown in the floods together?" She closed her eyes.

"There's a way through all floods," said Young Gerard.

And he ran with her over the hills with all his speed.

And Old Gerard returned to a hut as empty as it had been one-and-twenty
years ago. And they say that Combe Ivy, having never set eyes on the
boy in his life, swore that the shepherd's tale had been a fiction from
first to last, and kept him a serf to the end of his days.

("What a night of stars it is!" said Martin Pippin, stretching his arms.

"Good heavens, Master Pippin," cried Joyce, "what a moment to mention
it!"

"It is worth mentioning," said Martin, "at all moments when it is so. I
would not think of mentioning it in the middle of a snowstorm."

"You should as little think of mentioning it," said Joyce, "in the
middle of a story."

"But I am at the end of my story, Mistress Joyce."

Joscelyn: Preposterous! Oh! Oh, how can you say so? I am ashamed of you!

Martin: Dear Mistress Joscelyn, I thank you in charity's name for being
that for me which I have never yet succeeded in being for myself.

Joscelyn: What! are you not ashamed to offer us a broken gift? Your
story is like a cracked pitcher with half the milk leaked out. What was
the secret of the Lantern, the Cloak, and the Cherry-tree?

Joyce: Who was the lovely lady, his mother? and who the old crone?

Jennifer: What was the end of the Rough Master of Coates?

Jessica: Did not the lovers drown in the floods?

Jane: And if they did not, what became of them?

"Please," said little Joan, "tell us why Young Gerard dreamed those
dreams. Oh, please tell us what happened."

"Women's taste is for trifles," said Martin. "I have of