Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/124

 more the two men in the quarry stared at these strange objects, the more certain it seemed that they were indeed pigs; though whether the pigs were dead or alive it was impossible at that distance to say. They looked down into the garden of the inn into which the leathered things were dropping, and they could see the figure of Joan Hardy standing in front of the old pig-sty, with her bird-like head lifted, looking up into the sky.

"Singular present for a young lady," remarked Crane, "but I suppose when our mad young friend does start love-making, he would be likely to give impossible presents."

The eyes of the more poetical Hood were full of larger visions, and he hardly seemed to be listening. But as the sentence ended he seemed to start from a trance and struck his hands together.

"Yes!" he cried in a new voice, "we always come back to that word!"

"Come back to what word?" asked his friend.

"'Impossible,'" answered Owen Hood. "It's the word that runs through his whole life, and ours too for that matter. Don't you see what he has done?"

"I see what he has done all right," answered