Moorland Magic

“ So this is the moor,” said Nan, “ How wild! ”

They had come out of the scrub into an open country, treeless, uplifted in motionless billows beneath an arching immensity of sky.

“So desolate and barren!” shivered Mrs. Monroe.

But Dolly cried, “Not barren! Not desolate! How can you say that?”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt it looks more attractive when the heather is in bloom,” Mrs. Monroe admitted.

“Yes,” said Dolly, looking dreamily over the head of her chaperone. “Yes, it is very beautiful when the heather blooms; but it is never anything but beautiful to me.”

“You’ve never seen the heather in bloom,” objected Nan.

“Have n’t I?”Dolly queried absently.

A soft wind was blowing. It caught the little locks of chestnut hair from behind Dolly’s ears, and blew them against her cheeks.

“The wind is like a voice,” she said. “There’s something of Todhunter’s it makes me think of,—something Bob used to say last year when he was doing the Modern Celtic Revival section of his Ph. D. thesis. Do you remember?

Half chanting, she lifted her head, and wonder dawned in her eyes.

She rose gently to her feet.

“Be careful, dear; the road is very rough,” cautioned Mrs. Monroe.

“Bob’s daffy over Celtic things,” observed Nan.

“Just as it used to look!” said Dolly. “How could I forget ?”

“Would you mind sitting down, dear Dolly?” pleaded Mrs. Monroe. “It makes me nervous to have you stand. You might pitch out any minute.”

She sat down, but the rapture stayed in her eyes, and Nan leaned over, and gave her a little shake.

“You look like Joan of Arc in the Bastien-Lepage, Dolly. What do you see ?”

And Dolly, never turning her head, answered irrelevantly, “I think I will get out and walk.”

“Oh, my dear!” expostulated Mrs. Monroe. “In this dreary place?”

“Not dreary,” Dolly persisted. “Never dreary.” And she opened the carriage door.

The coachman pulled up his horses.

“But think of Bob! We are to meet him at Lynton, and we shall have to stop the carriage and wait till you catch up.”

Dolly got out and stood in the road, looking off over the moor.

“Don’t wait!” she said, after a moment. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“To Lynton?”

“ ’T is no great walk,” said the coachman. He had wheeled half round, and was eying Dolly with approval. “You ’ve only to follow the road, and it’ll bring you in. Even if you was lame of one leg, you’d make it afore dark this time of year, miss.”

“I don’t believe I’d walk all that way, Dolly,” said Nan.

“And Bob!” wailed Mrs. Monroe. “The least we can do, Nan, when your brother has crossed the ocean, is to be there to meet him. And then the highway robbers!”

“This here shire’s as peaceable and honest as you ’ll find in England,” snorted the coachman. “Them Doones give it a bad name once’t, but’t was never in my day. Do you think I’d leave a lady walk alone if she ’d come to harm ? I’ve maids of my own.”

“Dear Dolly,”begged Mrs. Monroe; “you can’t feel as Nan and I do about seeing Bob, of course, but" —

Nan chuckled wickedly, and Dolly turned her eyes approximately in the direction of her chaperone.

“It won’t matter if I’m not there at first,”she said. “I know you would rather have him to yourselves. I need a walk.”

This new aspect of the situation impressed Mrs. Monroe. Bob was her only son, and Bob had eyes for no one but Dolly when Dolly was about.

“It’s very sweet of you, my dear,” she faltered. “Are you sure” —

“ Dolly! ” cried Nan. “You know perfectly well Bob will”

“No, Nan,” her mother interrupted; “if Dolly wants to take this simple pleasure, don’t tease her. I would n’t leave her if there were the slightest danger. You are sure, dear” —

The coachman started his horses, and Mrs. Monroe’s sentence remained unfinished.

“Just the same, Bob will be hopping mad,” Nan declared emphatically. “Oh, pooh! mother; she did n’t hear me; and if she did, she knows it. Bob has n’t come all the way across the Atlantic to be with us. What’s the use of pretending he has ? Look! Her gown just matches the moor. I wish I walked with that happy, tilty step. Bob’s always saying she’s Celtic.”

“You’ve only to keep the road in your eye, miss,”called the coachman. “She do step off like a moorland maid,” he added reflectively. “I’d not know her for American.”

She was walking in the heather by the roadside, her head flung up, her eyes wide and smiling. Presently the carriage went in among the gray-green billows of the moor, and was swallowed up, and she was left alone in the trough of a motionless wave, with heather all about her feet, and yellow flower-of-the-broom in her hands, and the summer wind tossing her hair. She did not see the road again that day. She forgot there was a road. She forgot everything except the strange joy of wandering alone on the moor.

Her wandering had many moods. Sometimes she loitered through the heather, a slender, drifting shape, eyes vision-filled. At the edges of her gown twigs dangled. The gorse tore a barndoor half way up her skirt. She stuck a yellow flower in every one of her buttonholes, and a bunch of heather at her belt.

“I think I am fey,” she said, and laughed.

Sometimes she walked with a long, springing stride, proud laughter in her eyes. Thus was she walking when she climbed the Tor, and suddenly beheld all the wild, rugged glory, league upon league on every side, upheaving to her feet. She sang aloud when she saw it, flinging out her arms, and the music of her song was strange to her, and the words also were strange; they were not English words. Afterwards she could never remember what it was that she had sung when she stood at the top of the Tor.

Sometimes she knelt in the heather, and crushed its scratchy branches between her fingers. In two or three places she found patches of early bloom, and she kissed the little purple bells, and laid her ear close to them.

“I hear them ring,” she said. “I hear the little bells in my soul answer them.”

In midafternoon she lay down in the shade of a gorse bush, and looked up at the great white clouds, changing subtlyslow their shapes, as they hung in the pale English sky. And out she looked, along the moor, with its blending of bronze and green and gray, its splashes of yellow, its clear serenity of sunlight, its stretches of bluish, slow-moving shadow, its purple distance.

She turned her face so that her cheek pressed the cool earth.

“O moor!” she said. “There is no longer any thou and I. The bush of gorse I am; the little, stunted, wind-blown hawthorn tree, and the patch of gray, sheep-trodden grass. O moor, I am the Tor uplifted on thy breast. The earth against my cheek is not more thou than I am thou. There is a garden of heather in my heart.”

She lay a long time in this place. She had tossed her hat into the gorse, and the wind played havoc with her hair. After awhile a man came riding by. She sat up, startled; but, although the man looked her way, he did not seem to see her. He rode fast, and glanced over his shoulder anxiously, often, as if he feared pursuit. His face was young, but pallid and griefstricken. He wore high boots, a queer, old-fashioned hat, a long, wind-blown cloak. He carried something very tenderly in his arms, something that wailed in a thin, high, desolate little voice. Even after she could no longer see the rider and his horse, Dolly heard again and again that plaintive sound, and her own cheeks were dabbled wet with tears.

And a second time one came riding by. This was an oldish gentleman, grizzled and ruddy, in a fawn-colored cloak with three little shoulder capes, and a quaint, truncated, cone-shaped beaver with a chased silver buckle on the hatband. He lashed his horse, and drove in the spurs mercilessly. And he also, passing, looked at Dolly, yet did not seem to see her. And suddenly, when he was a little way off, his horse stumbled, and he went over its head, and lay huddled together on the ground. But when Dolly ran to help him, she could not find him. Neither could she see his horse anywhere.

“I may have been asleep,” she said; “and that was why he was dressed like Sir Anthony Absolute in Sheridan’s Rivals.”

And now, again, she heard the far, faint cry of a young child. “But did I dream?” she questioned.

At sundown a mist came in from the sea. The edges drifted along the tops of the moorland hills like a frayed curtain. Sometimes the curtain was suddenly rent in twain, and Dolly could see out over the endlessness of the moor. Sometimes the curtain swirled around her, thick and chill, shrouding her from the world. Her hair was damp; she tasted the sea on her lips.

“I am the mist on the moor,” she chanted. “I am the salt, fragrant mist. I remember!”

The long twilight had almost faded into night, and the mist had turned from shining white to duller and duller gray, when a grayer shape loomed up ahead of her, and she saw a house. Sheep were bleating, and close at hand there was a man with a pipe in his mouth, leaning over a gate, looking at her.

For a moment her heart beat uncomfortably fast; then she said, “Good evening!”

“Evenin’, miss,” replied the man, lifting his cap.

“I have been here before,” she remarked, looking beyond him at the gray old house.

“Not in my time, miss.”

Dolly laughed, and pointed to a window in the thatch: “I have looked out from yonder window.”

The man’s eyes followed her finger. “When was that, miss?” he queried politely; but his tone was incredulous.

“I don’t know.”

He bent a keen look upon her. She was hatless, disheveled; the yellow flowers hung limp in her buttonholes.

“Where is it you’re thinkin’ to pass the night, miss?”

“I had n’t thought!” She regarded him with a look half merry, half surprised. “Why, really, I had n’t thought. But the moor is a friendly place. I like to lie in the heather.”

The Man opened the gate with an awkward gesture of invitation: “’T is not so friendly when the mist’s abroad,” he said. “You’d best come in, and my missus’ll make up a bed for you.”

Dolly wavered a moment, looking from the house to the moor, and back again to the house. “They both call me,” she said. “Why is that ?” Then, with a lingering, backward look, she came inside the gate.

“You’ve been a-wanderin’ out there a good bit, of a while, I ’m thinkin’,” he remarked. “What do your friends be about not to look out for you ? ”

“They were in the carriage. I wanted to walk.” She turned on the doorstone, and smiled into his face. “I was a long time away, but I have come back!”

They went down a stone passage to a big, old-fashioned kitchen, where a gentle, blue-eyed woman was washing up the tea things.

“Here’s a young lady will stay the night,” said the man. “She’ve lost her way a-wanderin’ over the moor.”

“Oh, no!” interrupted Dolly. “I have n’t lost my way.”

The contradiction disconcerted her host. He opened his mouth, and shut it again. His wife, however, led their guest to the fire, saying, —

“ ’T is true, a body is not lost because she happens to be a bit far from home.”

Her English was formal and a little prim; she evidently avoided the dialect.

“I don’t think I’m far from home,” said Dolly.

“It’s what I’m thinking, miss,” returned the woman. “I seem to know your face; but where it is I ’ve seen you I could n’t say.”

Dolly gazed into the fire. Presently, as if she had just heard the woman’s words, she said, “You could n’t have seen me, unless you’ve lived in America.”

The man and his wife stared at her helplessly. “But you’ve not the voice of Americans, miss,” said the woman; “you’ve the voice of home-folk.”

“ And the coachman said I walked like a moorland maid,” mused Dolly.

“She’ve lost her way and her wits, both,” whispered the man.

“Bring the new milk for the young lady’s supper,” quoth his wife, ignoring the remark. The crackle of frying bacon roused Dolly.

“I have n’t had anything to eat since breakfast,” she announced, with her pretty laugh. “I had forgotten all about it.”

“Oh, miss, to think of that!” cried the woman. “Whatever have you been about to forget your victuals?”

“It was the moor,” said Dolly. She went to the window and looked out, but a hedge cut off the view. She moved restlessly to the door. “I want to see it,” she explained; “I’ll go out.”

“No,dearie,not to-night,’’soothed the woman. “Come, now, sit up to table, and eat this good cream.”

“It calls me,” said Dolly.

“ ’T is in the blood of some folk,” the woman answered.

“It’s in my blood,” said Dolly.

“It should n’t be, if you are from America,” objected the woman. “ You ’re mazed, with nothing to eat. A night’s sleep will set you up, and to-morrow my man’ll take you home.”

Dolly ate her supper obediently; but twice she got up from her chair and strayed to the door. The woman coaxed her back again, and each time Dolly said, “It calls me.”

When she had eaten eggs and bacon and jam and cream, her hostess took her upstairs to an ancient four-post bed in a dusky bedroom.

“We’ve little company,” said the woman; “but it’s a way I have, of keeping the bed ready.”

She laid out a coarse, clean nightgown, and bade her guest good-night. But Dolly did not turn her head from the window in the thatch, where she stood looking out on the moor.

The moon had risen, and a fresh wind was blowing the mist away, tearing it into strange shapes that hurried past the house in a wild, uncanny dance. The girl slipped to the floor, and leaned her chin on the window-sill. Presently the wide, dim moor lay revealed in the moonlight, billowed like the sea, but motionless. After a little, Dolly’s open-eyed dreaming began to be troubled. Sorrow stirred in her heart, vague at first, but taking definite shape until it grew a sharp, conscious grief that brought tears, and blurred the moonlit vision of the moor. She had not given a thought to Bob all afternoon, but now she whispered, —

“Dear Bob, don’t ask me to go!”

And, as in all that day’s experience, she was aware that this sorrow was no fresh sorrow, but something that she had suffered long ago.

“How can that be, when it must come to-morrow?” she questioned. “To-morrow ? — I suppose I ought to go to bed.”

When she lay between the sheets, she could still look out across the moor. The grief which had overwhelmed her oppressed her spirit, but now the element of loneliness entered into it. Her lips quivered, and tears splashed on the pillow.

“Why am I so forlorn, when Bob is waiting,” she sighed. “Who is it that I want ?”

She did not know how long she lay there indulging in little gusts of weeping; but on a sudden, — why, she could not tell, — she was comforted. There was no grief, nor any cause for grief. Her heart brimmed with contentment. She forgot why she had wept. The tears dried on her cheeks. Clear-eyed, she looked around the room, and there was a woman sitting in a chair beside the little table on which the snuffed-out candle stood, — a young woman, with bright chestnut hair like Dolly’s own. She wore a flowered Watteau gown, but the colors were paled and silvered by the moonlight. The wistfulness of her lovely face was inexpressibly touching. She was not looking at Dolly. She sat with her head resting against the high back of the chair, her chin a little uplifted, her hands idly lying along the chairarms. The attitude was one of fatigue, of patience, of hope deferred.

As a child, waking from its nap before its mother is aware, lies quiet for a while with eyes fixed on its mother’s unconscious face, so Dolly lay. And when the woman arose and came toward the bed, Dolly’s heart gave a glad little leap, as the heart of a child leaps when it sees its mother coming to take it in her arms. The woman came on a step or two, listlessly. Then she saw Dolly, and her eyes changed. The hungry look went out of them, and in its place flashed uncertainty, followed by intense, swift rapture. With arms outstretched she came running. And Dolly, with kindred rapture, looked up wordless into the lovely brooding face, and smiled, — that innocent, wide-eyed way babies smile.

A long time they held communion thus, silently, spirits touching; but at last, with a caress light as the touch of a butterfly’s wing, the woman whispered: — “They have sent you back to me. My baby!”

And Dolly knew, what she had known from the beginning, that in the eyes of the woman whose arms encircled her she was a newborn babe, — the woman’s own; and this knowledge, and the nearness of the woman, gave her peace. Need for speech had not awakened within her. The woman bending above her had become all her world, and between her and the woman flowed a voiceless language, from mother-spirit to child-spirit, to and fro. Nevertheless, presently the woman began to sing a song with words to it, softly, in a happy voice: —

And Dolly, listening, fell asleep with the mother-face bending above her.

“I see you have a ghost in the house,” she remarked casually to her hostess next morning.

“ Yes,” the woman answered, busy at the stove about Dolly’s breakfast. “ ’T is the poor lady looking for her baby.” Then she turned with sudden interest: “ But you did n’t see her, miss ?”

“Yes,” said Dolly; “I saw her.”

“But it’s the children that see her,” objected the woman. “ I never knew man or woman that did. My man has n’t set eyes on her since he was in frocks; and I was going on eight years the last time. You see, miss, I was raised an orphan by his mother. She gave me schooling, and I was a pupil-teacher two years and kept myself. But he missed me.”

She flushed shyly: “I think often of the ghost-mother, now that my own little one will so soon be here. ’T is sad for her to see a newborn babe in the house, and not her own.”

“Last night she found her own,” said Dolly.

“Found her own?” ejaculated the woman.

“I saw her face when she found it,” said Dolly. “ I saw her take it in her arms. I heard her sing a little lullaby to it.”

“You saw the baby ? ” gasped the woman.

“No,” said Dolly, after a pause; “I did n’t see the baby.”

“But — but” —

“Tell me about her,” Dolly begged. “How did she lose her baby? Was she your husband’s great-grandmother?”

“Oh, no, miss! She’s no ghost of ours; the family have always taken it a bit hard her being here, — not that, there was ever any harm in her, poor thing. In my man’s great-great-grandsire’s day she lived; her father was lord of the manor, and all his hope was in her; he had no other child. She was beautiful, as you’ll know, having seen her ghost ” —

The woman paused, and amazement swept over her face. “You look like her!” she stammered. “I thought I knew your face! Oh, miss, there’s something strange in all this! Don’t you feel it ? ”

“Yes,” Dolly assented; “I feel it.”

“And you saw her find her baby!”

“Tell me more,” said Dolly.

“Her father meant to make a great match for her, but she failed him. She’d an aunt in Wales she visited, —but never for long; she was one that had the moor in her blood, —like you, miss.” Again perplexity clouded the woman’s brow: “But you’re American.”

“Yes,” said Dolly.

“The family came out of Wales and lived on the moor back behind the time history begins. One of the Conqueror’s barons married a wild maid of the moor, long since. The young lady could never bide long away; but ’t was time enough for falling in love; and he was in trade, — the son of a tailor. One night he came out over from Abergavenny, and she went with him and was married. But when the child was coming, the longing for the moor took hold of her so that it was a kind of madness, and she would have it she must come back. All her people had been born on the moor. They came secretly, and she lay here a day and a night; the babe was born at midnight, and the mother died at dawn. Then word was brought that the grandfather had got wind of the matter and would take the child, — ’t was a maid, — and the husband, for resentment and grief, fled away with it.”

“I know,” said Dolly; “ I saw him yesterday, and the baby cried.

“You saw him yesterday, miss? But that was more than a hundred years ago!”

“I saw him yesterday, riding across the moor.”

“And did you see the old gentleman? Did you see what happened to the old gentleman ?”

“I think he broke his neck.”

“You’ve heard the story before.”

“No; I saw him thrown from his horse. Where did the husband go?”

“To America!” — the woman took Dolly by the shoulders, — “to America! But you could n’t be that baby. You could n’t! ’T was more than a hundred years ago.”

And then there was a sound of excited talking outside, of hurried steps, and a young man, unkempt and haggard, came running into the room. When he saw Dolly, he said: “Thank God!” in a loud, shaky voice; and again, “Thank God!” He held Dolly’s hat in his hand, the hat she had left in the gorse bush.

For a moment Dolly looked as if she had never seen this young man before; and then she said, “Bob!” And then she put out her hands to push him off, and said, “Don’t ask me to go!”

“Dolly!” cried the young man, “I’ve been looking for you all night long. We did n’t get worried till nearly dark, and then I started out of Lynton to meet you. I walked all the way to Porlock, thinking every imaginable horror. They gave me a pony and a guide there, and we’ve chased all over this infernal moor till we — oh, Dolly, suppose” —

His voice broke, and he held out his hands.

“You can’t take me,” she repeated, backing away from him. “I was enchanted a hundred years. But the moor has set me free.”

His hands fell to his sides, and he, too, stepped back.

“To-morrow I’ll try to make a joke of it, if you want to, Dolly; but now, — when I’ve just found you, ” —

“You have n’t found me,” said Dolly; and she laughed.

“ Hush! ” he cried. “ I thought of death. I thought of worse than death, out there among those hidden valleys, in the middle of the night. You shall not laugh!”

“Why do you try to find me?” said Dolly piteously. “Please go away, Bob! ”

Something a little alien and unreal in her face arrested him. He turned questioning eyes upon the farmer’s wife.

She answered with a slight warning shake of the head, and added in a soothing tone, meant evidently for Dolly’s ear: “She’s a bit upset, sir; what with the long day on the moor, and last night seeing our ghost.”

Dolly had turned to the window, and was standing on tiptoe, trying to see beyond the hedge. Pity, contrition, shocked uncertainty, crowded into Bob’s face. He gathered himself together and spoke to her gently, humbly, not venturing to move nearer.

“Tell me about it, dear! Let me understand.”

She came to him then, and laid her hand upon his arm, looking up into his face with sweet eyes a little wild, and a whimsical, elfish smile on her lips.

“We thought it was Dolly, did n’t we, Bob? American, and twentieth century, and all that. We thought father was the president of a bank and mother believed in woman’s suffrage. We thought I was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and went to school in Farmington.” She laughed, her eyes danced, but without merriment. She lifted her face a little nearer to his. “We were mistaken, Bob. I have remembered the forgotten things, from long ago. When I lie on the heather I am invisible. Yesterday two ghosts passed by, and never saw me. I am the moorland. I am not different from it at all. They could n’t see me. And I am some of the ghosts.”

He had been watching her gravely, intent upon her words, and now an amazed comprehension began to dawn in his face. He was a healthy young man, but he was also a student,and he had just received his Ph.D, in Celtic research. His studies had taught him, among other things, that there are times when common sense should be held in abeyance, Dolly, instinctively aware of his change from passive to active sympathy, nestled closer.

“The ghost-mother has been waiting so long for me, and I never loved any one as I love her,” she whispered. “You won’t take me away, Bob?”

He curbed a very natural desire to explain to her the absurdity of her request. Hechoked back the bitter words of wounded love that rose to his lips. His restraint was the more heroic in that he had not breakfasted.

“ I will be content with what you think you ought to do,” he said. “Who is the ghost-mother ? ”

“Tell him!” she bade the farmer’s wife, who was laying a second plate on the table. And, while Bob fortified his unselfish impulses with jam and cream, the woman told again the ghost storv.

“And she sang me to sleep, Bob ; listen ! ” Dolly crooned the strange lullaby.

“Why should she sing in Welsh triads, if she was an eighteenth-century ghost ?” mused Bob.

“She did n’t make the song,” Dolly murmured. “The moor made it; the moor that mothered her and me, and sings in my blood. You cannot take me away. The moor will call me back. And I shall remember how the ghost-mother waits to sing me to sleep.”

“Asking your pardon, miss,” interrupted the farmer’s wife; “but she won’t sing again. You ’ve laid her for good and all. It’s a saying in our family that when the baby comes back to the moorland and its mother’s arms, the poor lady will cease to walk. You ’re not a baby, of course, miss; but it’s plain she thought you were, and if she’s satisfied, you can go your way with nothing on your conscience.”

“Yes,” said Bob, casting a grateful glance at the woman, and endeavoring to disguise his eagerness. “ You have brought her peace. Don’t you see, dear? And now you can come home with me.”

“But the moor?” said Dolly. “No! No!” And she got up, and would have run out of the room, but he was at the door before her, and took her hands.

“Dolly, you and I will go out on the moor together, and you shall choose between us.”

She looked up at him like a tormented, reproachful child, and tried to draw her hands away. “But there won’t be any choice,” she said with gentle obstinacy; “I belong to the moor.”

“You shall not say” — he began; but the wildness came into her eyes, and recalled him to himself. “You said the moor had set you free,” be ended, with forced gentleness.

“Yes, free! You cannot take me away! ”

“Free to choose. It is between me and the moor, Dolly.”

“This happened a long time ago,” said she, “when I was another ghost. Why must I have that heartbreak again ? He was the son of a tailor, — but I listened to him.”

“And you will listen to me.”

“Out on the moor, — you said,— not here.”

“Yes; on the moor.”

He left her with the farmer’s wife while he despatched his guide a-horse back to Lynton to relieve the minds of Mrs. Monroe and Nan. From the farmer he learned that he might strike the road two miles from Lynton, by following a little track the farmer’s donkey had worn across the moor. Whereupon Bob had a happy thought, and hired the donkey. And when Dolly was set upon its back, they three went out over the wavering trail.

But after a while Bob grew desperate. Dolly seemed almost oblivious of his presence. She did not hear him when he spoke to her; she sat like one dazed. Sometimes her lips moved, but he could not hear what she said. Sometimes she laughed. Twice she slipped off Neddie’s back, and went down on her knees, plucking heather, kissing it, talking to it, until Bob lifted her up and set her again on the donkey.

At last the young man came to the end of his patience. He gave Dolly a little shake, and deliberately turned her face to his.

“Now it is my turn,” he said. “You must listen to me.”

“The moor will not let me.” Her eyes were rapt and shining.

“I am going to blindfold you, Dolly; perhaps you can listen then. Let us see which voice is clearer when you cannot see, — mine, or the voice of the moor.”

Reluctantly she let him tie her handkerchief over her eyes; and when he had adjusted the knot and made sure that she could not see, he took her in his arms, and whispered, —

“Now do you hear me, sweetheart?”

“I hear the voice of the tailor’s son,” she sighed. And under his breath Bob said, “Damn!”

“Ah, do not ask me to choose.”

“She went away with the tailor’s son,” Bob persisted, keeping her in his arms as he walked beside the donkey. “She went away with him, and he made her very happy.”

“But he had to bring her back,” said Dolly. “She came back to the moor.”

“I’ll bring you back, — I promise.”

“From America?”

“Yes, — when you want to come.”

“I think the tailor’s son must have made that promise. She never would have gone with him else.”

Bob’s heart lightened. She had spoken of those dead-and-gone people as if they were outside herself.

The donkey had turned into the highroad now; the gorse no longer plucked at their garments; Bob’s feet no longer crisped the heather.

“We’ll come back and collect folktales and traditions,” he said cheerily.

“Can we — on the moor?”

“ I should think we could,” he laughed. “You’ve collected several centuries of them since yesterday.”

“ I did ? ” The handkerchief moved as she wrinkled her brows, and he quickly pressed it against her eyes. The girl turned and clung to him.

“Nan did n’t feel that way when she saw the moor; and your mother hated it. And even you walk on the outside, though somehow you understand. But I was one with it, Bob. I was the blossoms and the little pools, the Tor and the ancient peoples. I was a wild thing. I was women and men, and mist, and purple distance. I was the mother who bore me, and I was my own great-great-grandfather riding a breakneck race after the baby that was myself newborn.” She waited a moment, and then slipped one arm gropingly around his neck, and laid her cheek against his: “You don’t say it is nonsense, Bob.”

After a moment he chanted these words softly: —

“The words are not mine, but it belongs to me!” she cried. “It sounds like a song.”

“A poet sang it, dearest, centuries ago, in Wales and hereabout. His name was Taliessin, and men said he had drunk of the Cup of the Grail, and knew all wisdom.”

Again there was silence; but Dolly still kept her arm around Bob’s neck.

“You are too good to me,” she said at last, with a little sob. “I forgot all about you yesterday. I did not even remember there was a you, — until night; and then I only wished you were not. I’ve hurt you so! I’ve been cruel and horrid. You must n’t want to marry me, Bob; I belong to the moor, and you are not a part of that life. I might forget you again.”

“Not again, beloved. I am one of the hidden memories now. I have wrestled with the magic. You could not shut me out if you would.”

“ I would not,” she whispered.

He bent his face to hers. The donkey stood still.

“ Are we still on the moor ? ” she asked presently.

For answer he untied the bandage. They stood on the great foreland above Lynton, facing the blue, sun-sparkling summer sea.

She gave an ecstatic gasp, then turned to look back; but Bob took her face between his hands, and she had to look into his eyes instead.

“What is it?” he asked, after a while, for her eyes were troubled.

“I am trying to remember whether I was happier than this when the ghostmother sang me to sleep.”

“ And ? ”

“I — I am afraid not.”

He laughed victoriously, and kissed her eyes.

“If she has gone to her rest at last, I shall never hear her sing the lullaby again,” she said. “I had not thought of that. It grieves me.”

“But you can sing it yourself — to — to” — said Bob.