daughter was wont to describe with characteristic brutality as sheer
swank--was quickly over.

As soon as the buggy left the fields and bumped down into the pack-horse
track which led up the shoulder of the Downs, Old Mat halted. Boy
slipped down from her seat, and the old man and Monkey Brand followed
more leisurely. Silver dismounted, too.

The little cavalcade wound slowly up the hill, skirting the steep side
of a coombe that gathered the dusk in its huge green bowl until it
brimmed with mystery.

Boy looked down into it and longed, as often before, that she had wings
on which to float upon that soft and undulating sea of shadow.

Not seldom this desire was so strong upon her that she felt a certainty
she _had_ wings, wings within her which she could not spread, but of the
existence of which this insurgent desire was the irrefragable witness.

The sides of the coombe were hung with beeches sheathed now in tenderest
green; while from out of the emptiness beneath, the insistent and
melancholy cry of lambs seemed to make the shadows quiver and touched a
chord of wistfulness in the heart of the girl.

The sun was already sinking behind the smooth ramparts of the hills and
rose to meet them as they climbed, peering at them over the summit
through the shaggy eyebrow of the gorse.

Boy walked beside the old mare, throwing every now and then swift and
surreptitious glances at her new treasure. She was fearful lest the