"Oh," says he, "that's fine talking. Do you think that I couldn't catch you before you got home? And then I'd put you both in the sand the same as old Anne Jones' husband put the men off the Spanish wreck in the sand. And the sand will blow, blow, blow-and nobody will know.' And he sang out, waving his knife "Blow, blow, blow, And nobody will know If you get home alive you tell that rhyme to old Anne Jones, and say you heard some one singing it in a dream, and see what a face she will make. And you tell her, too, that old Mother Biddle can see through the sand like water, and she knows where more dead men lie in the Warren than Anne Jones has pots of money buried." He'd tricked me down so easy, and he was so pleased with his knife and his talk that he hadn't reckoned that I was a strong lad when I had the chance. I didn't give him time to think better. I toppled him like a skittle-pin, pitched him on his stomach, had his knife from him, and knelt on his back. Can you see through the sand?" I shouts out, and I rubs his face in it as he squirmed under me. Then I let him go, and I threw his knife after him. But the little girl wasn't pleased at all. She cried, and wouldn't let me come near her. She She her again for seven years. I was punished for running away from school and going on the Warren, and besides that I'd had enough to scare me. The next time I saw her was in the village coming with Anne Jones from the funeral of her sister by adoption, Lizzie Ellen, Anne Jones' eldest girl. was all dressed in black. looked quite different to when I had seen her on the Warren. She had grown taller and slimmer. She turned and looked at me as she came out of the churchyard gate-just one look, but I felt as if her eyes went right into me and set me on fire. Whatever I did for days after that I couldn't get the picture of Mariana out of my head. The way she had looked at me, the way she had stood, the way she had walked away seemed to keep coming to me like patches of light you see so often flying on the Warren on cloudy days. The Sunday but one after that I put on my best clothes, and went off into the Warren to Cae'r Groes. I was very shy and awkward, and I wondered whatever I should say. I thought at first to wander about and take my chance of seeing Mariana. You see you can tell from the way I talk I was falling in love. You will think me foolish. But that thought didn't come to me at all. I only felt in myself that I wanted to see Mariana again, almost, you might say, out of That was how I first saw curiosity. The Warren was as much a strange land to me as it had been when I was a boy, though, of course, it didn't have the same terrors. When I came in sight of the little farm in that great hollow among the sandhills, that's just a little farther, as I was telling you, than the one with the salt pool in it, I saw Anne Jones walking about in her clogs, and with a shawl thrown over her head, carrying a pail. As soon as she saw me she popped inside. When I got by the farm I felt foolish enough. I stood there holding the little wooden gate for a minute wondering how it would do if I went in and asked the time. And then Anne Jones came and stood in the doorway. She looked She looked quite smart by now with a new cloth cap on her head and a pair of new boots on her feet, and a neat bodice and skirt on. She smiled at me and said, "It's a nice day for you to come to Cae'r Groes, Fred Murdoch. The kettle's boiling, so you come in this minute and have a cup of tea." "I was just thinking of asking the time, Mrs Jones," I said, still biding by my old excuse. But I wasn't very clear in my speech. I felt so foolish and red in the face, and I thought my clothes seemed so stiff and new. She didn't quite get what I said, or else she was thinking of something else, for she said, "Time, bachgan! dear me, there's plenty of time for everything when you're young. Come inside with you!" So I went in. Everything was very homely and pretty in the cottage; all the bits of brass cleaned as bright as you could see your face in them, and all the ornaments looking very old-fashioned. 66 Mariana has gone for driftwood. Sit you down, she won't be long, then we'll all have a cup of tea," said Anne, and she began to lay out the best china. "It does us good to see a stranger here sometimes. It's very lonely out here, and now there's only two of us left. It's a hard thing, bachgan, to lose a child, but Lizzie Ellen had two years of suffering, poor dear, and you can't say it isn't for the best that the Lord has taken her." Anne said all this without pulling out her handkerchief, which women generally do when speaking of death, and the funeral had not been a fortnight since, but Anne was a woman with more sense than foolishness, though she had a soft heart. She went on talking, putting things out on the table, and asking me questions all the time. By the way she went about it you wouldn't guess but what I'd been familiar in the house all my life, and I began to lose my shyness and talked away as glib as a starling. Then I heard the little gate open, and I came over foolish again all at once. Mariana had heard us talking, and she stopped in the doorway wondering who the stranger could be. "Come in, girl," said Anne. "There's a gentleman to see hurry!" you." You see, although it was Sunday, she wasn't dressed up as they are in the village on the Sabbath she was just in an old black bodice and a red skirt, very tattered, and standing with her bare legs and a corded bundle of driftwood over her back. But in spite of that I've never seen her look bonnier than she did then, nor indeed anybody else, no matter what finery they had on. She looked as strong and well-set-up and mettlesome as a young horse. But when she saw who it was, the colour flew to her neck and face, and she let go the bundle of drift with a crash, and a bit sticking out took off a good four inches of wall-paper. I remember that as well as if I had gone and measured it, because I found myself studying the length of the tear and the crinkled tongue of paper that waved at the bottom of the gash, as if I had gone there to see that instead of Mariana. So Mariana went to tidy up. She did not seem pleased to see me, but sullen and proud, and went off to her bedroom, acting as if I wasn't there, but I caught a glance of her eye in a lookingglass, and it made me feel so awkward I began to whistle as if I was out-of-doors working. But Anne went on talking and altering the places of all the things on the table, and paid no heed to my bad manners. I Now I'd seen Mariana once more, I felt to be burning up worse than ever with desire to see her again. I couldn't bear sitting quietly there listening to the old woman chattering and clinking the china. wanted to go out and breathe the fresh air and have a laugh to myself. I dare say it sounds silly, but you see everything was so strange in the way it happened. the way it happened. I couldn't bear that waiting, so I got up and said, "I'll take the wood to the shed." "Toot! said Anne, it will spoil your Sunday clothes." But I only laughed. Off I went with the bundle to the little outhouse. It was dark inside. I flung the wood down, still corded, and I was just going out when I saw the place was not empty. There was someone standing in the shadow. I wondered what he was doing there, keeping so quiet, so I said to him in Welsh, quite ordinary, "Hello! how are you to-day? "How are you?" he replied, all muffled up as it he was talking in his boots. Of course, I didn't want to spoil sport, but that look of Mariana's came back on me, and I turned bitter jealous all in a minute. "Why don't you come to the house?" I said. He didn't say anything to that, so I went up and looked at him close, and I saw that it was the gipsy lad Con that I'd seen with Mariana on the Warren years before. He had grown taller, but his face wasn't much altered, and his eyesoh, well, I mustn't run on about his eyes! When he saw I knew him he took a different line. He moved from where he was, and said, "Dear me, it's the young gentleman from Tir Forgan. I didn't know you, sir." Nobody had ever called me "sir" before, and I couldn't but feel my vanity a bit tickled. He went on, “I just came to bring a little present of eggs from old Mother Biddle. She's very fond of Mariana. But Anne Jones has a spite against us, so I was just keeping quiet in here till I saw my chance." "Oh," I said, "I didn't know the gipsies kept hens!" 66 You mustn't say a word of that to the girl," Anne whispered to me when she came in again. "Those gipsies are always hanging round. It isn't fit with them about." Soon Mariana came in, and the old woman made me feel so at home that we all laughed and talked as if I'd been visiting in Cae'r Groes all my life. But I couldn't forget about Con, and when I looked at Mariana every now and then I felt the blood racing in me. Well, the next Sunday I came again, and this time they were both expecting me, and were both dressed up as smart as any one in the village. And I went on coming every Sunday all the summer. And the more I went the more mad in love I got with Mariana. But she was very strange with me when the old woman was not in the room. She was stupid and silly and wouldn't talk, and I could never draw her to come out for a walk with me on the Warren. So I never got any further with what I chiefly wanted to talk to her about. But one Sunday in the autumn, when it was dark, before I started back over the Warren, the two women were in the doorway saying "goodnight" to me. The warm light looked so pretty coming out of the cottage; and the calm sweet air, and the soft starlight over the sandhills, and the noise of the sea in the distance, all seemed like voices talking and telling me that I couldn't go away without something dearer between us, and I stepped back suddenly and said to Mariana, "Oh Cariad bach!" You can't say that quite in English-dear sweetheart-little sweetheart-but that's not quite it. There's more in those Welsh words, anyway there's much more in them to me. And I took her round the waist and kissed her. The old woman sprang in as quick as knife and shut to the door and bolted it, leaving us out there alone. I burst out laughing. I thought it was a good joke. But Mariana did not laugh. She stood there and held back her head and pushed me from her. Then I felt jealous and angry all at once, and I said, "Why do you let me come every Sunday and talk and laugh and carry on if you don't care for me?" "I do care for you," she said. "You don't love me," I said. She did not answer me. I took her hand. She seemed to be relenting. I pressed her to me, and whispered in her ear. She did not say anything. I could not see her face, but I felt tears upon her cheeks. I suppose the old woman thought it was all had out between us by now, for I heard her slip back the bolt. Mariana no sooner heard it than she turned round, opened the door, and ran into the house. I thought things had turned out badly, but I didn't want to make them worse by hanging about, so I walked away, and vowed I would not go there next Sunday. But when the day had come and gone I felt so bad about it I couldn't eat or sleep that night. It was just harping on the thought of how her cheek felt, and that there were tears on it, just that-but it kept me awake, and made me feel as if I was thrown in the bottom of a deep well. Moreover, I felt I was being made a fool of, and though the old woman had always been so friendly and seemed to be helping me all the while, I got suspicious of her. My father and mother by adoption had asked me all manner of questions about where I went to on Sundays, and though they only meant it out of kindness, I took it in bad part, and thought every one's hand was against me in my love. The worst of it was Mariana herself. It seemed so strange that she should be so cold, and then that there should be tears on her cheek. She |