together.  It was a different sort of life.  I thought—I just thought I should like to see it again.”

He was a little alarmed at the wistfulness in her voice.

“Mother—what do you mean?” he cried.

“Nothing, Eddie, nothing.  It was another life.”

She put her arms round his neck and pulled him gently to her.  He was content to lie there, with his head on her breast, while she talked in a low voice of that distant place and of her own childhood.  He listened in a dream and did not speak at all until she began to tell him a long story which the Felindre shepherd, Morgan, had told her when she was a child.  Then Edwin opened his eyes and stopped her.

“Dearest, I know that story,” he said.  “Oh, go on, it’s wonderful. . . .”

“Perhaps I’ve told it to you before: perhaps I told you when you were a baby—I used to talk to you a great deal in your cradle.  Perhaps . . . I was rather lonely when you came, Eddie.”

“Oh, no, I’m sure you haven’t. . . .”

“Look, the cloud is blotting out my mountain now,” she said.  “It is time we were going.”  The counties were asleep already.

Over the brow of the hill they stepped into a different world, for where the smoke of the black country had blotted the fading skyline a hundred pit fires were beginning to blink out, and nearer still a pillar of flame shot up into the sky.

“Oh, look, mother,” Edwin cried.

“They’re puddling the iron at the great Mawne furnaces.  Stand still a moment, we might almost hear their roar.”

But no sound came to them but the clear tinkle of a stream plunging into its mossy cup, and this seemed to bring them back into touch with the lands that they had left.  They hurried down through the dark woodland paths, and when they reached the little town lights had bloomed in all the ugly cottage windows, and the streets seemed deserted, for the children were indoors.

III

She told him that she was rather tired, and would like to lie down and rest for a little time before supper; and with the glow of the hill air still on his cheeks and his limbs full of a delicious lassitude he strolled down the lane and into the ill-lighted street of the town.  He passed through the little passage at the side of the shop and through the dark bottle-room where he had to pick his way among drug hampers and empty acid-carboys.  Through the upper part of the glass door he could see his father sitting on a high stool at the desk, his spectacles half-way down his nose, dreaming among the bad debts in his ledger.  Edwin stood there for several minutes, for the picture fascinated him.