magpies, the white and black of their plumage showing silver and
iridescent green in the sun as they swooped over the field, he took
steps to justify the omen by setting off across the moors in quest of
Phoebe.




CHAPTER II

THE MILL


As Ishmael went along he picked a large bunch of the wayside flowers as
an offering to Phoebe--purple knapweed and betony, the plumy dead-pink
heads of hemp-agrimony, and tufts of strong yellow fleabane, all
squeezed together in his hot little hand. The air seemed alive with
butterflies and moths, white and brown and red, and clouds of the "blue
skippers" that look like periwinkles blown to life. A bee shot past him
so quickly that the thrum of it sounded short as a twanged string, and
the next moment a late foxglove spire, naked save for its topmost bell,
quivered beneath the onslaught of the arched brown and yellow body. The
heat haze shimmered on the distant horizon like an insect's wing, but
was tempered on the moorland height by the capricious wind, and Ishmael
kept doggedly on.

He was a wiry little boy, thin and brown, with dark hair that grew in a
point on the nape of his neck, and hazel eyes set rather deeply under
straight, sulky-looking brows. The lower part of his face was small and
pointed for the breadth across forehead and cheek bones, and, with his