Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/211

 ery, which had been the former Lady Coomber's dressing-room, she was familiar, having been one of the housemaids. But the big rooms on the ground floor overawed her. She never would enter by the great door, but always by a small side entrance leading to the house-keeper's room. Eleanor had given instructions that it should always be left open.

He walked on slowly after he had left his mother. There, where the sun was sinking behind the distant elms, she lay sleeping. At the bend of the road was the old white thorn that had witnessed their first kiss. Reaching it he looked round stealthily and, seeing no one, flung himself upon the ground and, stretching out his arms, pressed his lips to the sweet-smelling earth.

He laughed as he rose to his feet. These lovers' rhapsodies he had once thought idle nonsense! They were true. Going through fire and water—dying for her, worshipping the ground she trod on. This dear moorland with its lonely farmsteads and its scattered cots; its old folks with their furrowed faces, its little children with shy wondering eyes; its sandy hollows where the coneys frisked at twilight; its hidden dells of fern and bracken where the primroses first blossomed; its high banks beneath the birches where the red fox had his dwell-