ne, up hills, down hillocks, along headlands, shores, and
shingle; and I had the happiness of being half-frozen in the surf before
Nina learned of it and stopped me. . . . Come; sit over here; because
I'm quite crazy to tell you everything as usual--about how I played
marbles with the children--yes, indeed!--down on my knees and shooting
hard! Oh, it is divine, that sea-girdled, wind-drenched waste of moor
and thicket!--the strange little stunted forests in the hollows of the
miniature hills--do you remember? The trees, you know, grow only to the
wind-level, then spread out like those grotesque trees in fairy-haunted
forests--so old, so fantastic are these curious patches of woods that I
am for ever watching to see something magic moving far in the twilight
of the trees! . . . And one night I went out on the moors; oh, heavenly!
celestial!--under the stretch of stars! Elf-land in silence, save for
the bewitched wind. And the fairy forests drew me toward their edges,
down, down into the hollow, with delicious shivers.

"Once I trembled indeed, for the starlight on the swamp was suddenly
splintered into millions of flashes; and my heart leaped in pure fright!
. . . It was only a wild duck whirring headlong into the woodland
waters--but oh, if you had been there to see the weird beauty of its
coming--and the star-splashed blackness! You _must_ see that with me,
some time. . . . When are you coming to Silverside? We go back very
soon, now. . . . And I don't feel at all like permitting you to run wild
in town when I'm away and playing hopscotch on the lawn with Drina!"

She lay back in her chair, laughing, her hands linked together behind
her head.

"Really, Captain Selwyn, I confess I missed you. It's much better fun
when two can see all those things that I saw--the wild roses just a
tangle of slender green-mossed stems, the new grass so intensely green,
with a touch of metallic iridescence; the cat's-paws chasing each other
across the purple inland ponds--and that cheeky red fox that came
trotting out of the briers near Wonder Head, and, when he saw me, coolly
attempted to stare me out of countenance! Oh, it's all very well to tell
you about it, but there is a little something lacking in unshared
pleasures. . . . Yes, a great deal lacking. . . . And here is our
tea-tray at last."

Nina came up to join them. Her brother winced as she smiled triumphantly
at him, and the colour continued vivid in his face while she remaine