Spring was blown across the country by the wildest storms that the sea-coast had known for very many years. For days the seas rose against the rocks in a cursing fury--the battle of rock and wave gave pretty spectacle to the surrounding country and suddenly the warriors, having proved the mettle of their hardihood, turned once again to good fellowship. But the wind and the rain had done their work. In the week before Easter, with the first broadening sweep of the sun across the rich brown earth and down into the depths of the twisting lanes the spring was there--there in the sweet smell of the roots as they stirred towards the light, there in the watery gleam of the grass as it caught diamonds from the sun, but there, above all, in the primrose clump hidden in the clefts of the little Cornish woods--so with a cry of delight Spring had leapt from the shoulders of that roaring wind and danced across the Cornish hills.

On Good Friday there was an incident. Peter was free of the office for the day and had walked towards Truro. There was a little hill that stood above the town. It was marked by a tree clump black against the blue sky--at its side was a chalk pit, naked white--beyond was Truro huddled, with the Fal a silver ribbon in the sun. Peter stood and watched and sat down because he liked the view. He had walked a very long way and was tired and it was an afternoon as hot as Summer.

Suddenly there was a cry: "Help, please--oh--help to get Crumpet."

He looked up and saw standing in front of him a little girl in a black hat and a short black frock--she had red hair that the sun was transforming into gold. Her face was white with terror, and tears were making muddy marks on it and her hands were black with dirt. She was a very little girl. She appealed to him between her sobs, and he understood that Crumpet was a dog, that it had fallen some way down the chalk-pit and that "Miss Jackson was reading her Bible under a tree."

He jumped up immediately and went to find Crumpet. A little way down the chalk-pit a fox-terrier puppy was balancing its fat body on a ledge of chalk and looking piteously up and down. Peter clambered down, caught the little struggling animal in his arms, and restored it to its mistress. And now followed an immense deal of kissing and embracing. The dog was buried in red hair and only once and again a wriggling paw might be observed--also these exclamations--"Oh, the umpty-rumpty--was it nearly falling down the great horrid pit, the darling--oh, the little darling, and was it scratched, the pet? But it was a wicked little dog--yes, it was, to go down that nasty place when it was told not to"--more murmurings, and then the back was straightened, the red, gold hair flung back, and a flushed face turned to the rather awkward Peter who stood at attention.

"Thank you--thanks, most awfully--oh, you darling" (this to the puppy).

"You see, Miss Jackson was reading her Bible aloud to herself, and I can't stand that, neither can Crumpet, and she always forgets all about us, and so we go away by ourselves--and reading the Bible makes her sleep--she's asleep now--and then Crumpet wouldn't stay at heel although I was telling him ever so hard, and he would go over the cliff--and if you hadn't been there..." at the thought of the awful disaster the puppy was again embraced. Apparently Crumpet was no sentimentalist, and had had enough of feminine emotion--he wriggled out of his mistress' arms, flopped to the ground, shook himself, and, advancing to Peter, smelt his boots.

"He likes you. I'm so glad--he only does that to people he likes, and he's very particular." The small girl flung her hair back, smiled at Peter, and sat down on the grass.

"It may be rather damp," Peter said, feeling very old and cautious and thinking that she really was the oddest child he'd even seen in his life. "It's only March you know."

"It's nothing to do with months, it's whether it's rained or not--and it hasn't--sit down with me. Old Jackson won't be here for ages."

Peter sat down. The puppy was a charming specimen of its kind--it had enormous ears, huge flat feet, and a round fat body like a very small barrel. It was very fond of Peter, and licked his cheek and his hands, and finally dragged off his cap, imagined it a rabbit, and bit it with a great deal of savagery and good-humour.

There followed conversation.

"I like you most awfully. I like your neck and your eyes and your hair--it's stiff, like my father's. My name is Clare Elizabeth Rossiter.

What's yours?"

"Peter Westcott."

"Do you live here?"

"No--a good long way away--by the sea."

"Oh, I'm staying at Kenwyn--my uncle lives at Kenwyn, but I live in London with father and mother and Aunt Grace--it's nice here. I think you're such a nice boy. Will you come and see father and mother in London?"

Peter smiled. It would not be the thing for some one in a bookshop to go and call on the parents of any one who could afford Crumpet and Miss Jackson, but the thought of London, the very name of it, sent his blood tingling to his face.

"Perhaps we shall meet," he said. "I'm going to London soon."

"Oh! are you? Oh! How nice! Then, of course, you will come to tea. Every one comes to tea."

Crumpet, tired of the rabbit, worn out with adventure and peril, struggled into Peter's lap and slumbered with one ear lying back across his eyes. The sun slipped down upon the town and touched the black cathedral with flame, and turned the silver of the river into burning gold. On the bend of the hill against the sky came a black gaunt figure.

"Miss Jackson!" Clare Elizabeth Rossiter leapt to her feet, clutched Crumpet, held him upside down, and turned to go.

But for an instant she stayed, and Peter was rewarded with a very wonderful smile.

"I am so glad you were here--she generally sleeps longer, but perhaps it was New Testament to-day, and that's more exciting. It is a pity, because there were such lots of things--I like you most awfully."

She gave him a very dirty hand, and then her black stockings vanished over the hill.

Peter turned, through a flaming sunset, towards his home ... the end of the incident.

III

But he came home, on that Good Friday evening with an idea that that afternoon on the hill had given him. It was an idea that came to him from the little piece of superstition that he carried about with him--every Cornishman carries it. Treliss was always a place of many customs, and, although now these ceremonies drag themselves along with all the mercenary self-consciousness that America and cheap trips from Manchester have given to the place, at this stage of Peter's history they were genuine and honest enough. To see from the top of the Grey Hill, the rising of the sun on Easter morning was one of them--a charm that brought the most infallible good luck until next Easter Day came round again, and, good for you, if you could watch that sunrise with the lad or lass of your choice, for to pass round the Giant's Finger as the beams caught the stone made the success of your union beyond all question. There was risk about it, for if mists veiled the light or if clouds dimmed the rising then were your prospects but gloomy--but a fine Easter morning had decided many a wedding in Treliss.

Peter had known of this for many years, but, in earlier times, he had not been at liberty, and of late there had been other things to think about. But here was a fine chance! Was he not flinging himself into the world under the very hazardous patronage of Mr. Zanti on Easter Wednesday, and would he not therefore need every blessing that he could get? And who knew, after all, whether these things were such nonsense?

They were old enough, these customs, and many wise people believed in them. Moreover, one had not been brought up in the company of Frosted Moses and Dicky the Fool without catching some of their fever! "There was a little star rolling down hill like a button," says Dicky, with his eyes staring....' Well, and why not?

And indeed here was Peter at this stage of things, a mad I bundle of contradictions--old as a judge when up against the Realities, young as Crumpet the puppy when staring at Romance. Give him bread and you have him of cast-iron--stern, cold, hard of muscle, grim frown, stiff back, no smiles. Give him jam and you have credulity, simplicity, longing for friendship, tenderness, devotion to a small girl in a black frock, a heart big as the world. See him on Good Friday afternoon, laughing, eagerly questioning, a boy--see him on Good Friday night, grim, legs stiff, eyes cold as stones, a man--no easy thing for Mrs. Pascoe's blowzy thunderings to conquer, but something vastly amusing apparently to grandfather Westcott to watch.

He discovered that the sun rose about six o'clock, and therefore five o'clock on Easter morning found him shivering, in the desolate garden with his nose pressed to the little wooden gate. The High Road crossed the moor at no great distance from him, but the faint grey light that hung like gauze about him was not yet strong enough to reveal it. He would hear them as they passed and they must all go up that road on the way to the hill. In the garden there was darkness, and beyond it in the high shadow of the house and the surrounding trees, blackness. He could smell the soil, and his cheeks were wet with beads of moisture; very faintly the recurrent boom of the sea came through the mist, dimmed as though by thick folds of hanging carpet.

Suddenly the dark trees by the house, moved by a secret wind, would shudder. The little black gate slowly revealed its bars against the sky as the grey shadows lightened. Then there were voices, coming through the dark shut off, like the sea, by the mist--strange voices, not human, but sharing with the soil and the trees the mysterious quality of the night. The voices passed up the road--silence and then more voices.

Peter unlatched the gate and stole out to the road, stumbling over the rough moorland path and clambering across the ditch to safer ground.

Figures were moving like shadows and voices fell echoing and re-echoing like notes of music--this was dissociated from all human feeling, and the mists curled up like smoke and faded into the air. Peter, in silence, followed these shadows and knew that there were other shadows behind him. It would not take long to climb the Grey Hill--they would be at the top by half-past five.

There was a voice in his ear:

"Hallo! You--Westcott! Why, who would have thought it?"

He turned round and found at his side the peaked face of Willie Daffoll, now a young man of eighteen, with an affection for bright ties and socks, once the small child who had fought with Peter at old Parlow's years ago. Peter had not seen very much of him during those years. They had met in the streets of Treliss, had spoken a word or two, but no friendship or intimacy. But this early hour, this mysterious dawn, bred confidence, and Peter having grown, under the approaching glitter of London, more human, during the last few weeks than he had been in all his life before, was glad to talk to him.

"Oh, I've often wanted to go," he said. "It brings good luck, you know."

"Well, fancy your believing that. I never thought you'd believe in rot like that."

"Why are you going, then?"

The young man of ties and waistcoats dropped his voice. "Oh--a girl.

She's here somewhere--she said she'd come--thinks there's something in it. Anyhow she wants it--she's stunning...."

A girl! Peter's mind flew absurdly back to a small child in a short black frock. "Oh! Crumpet!" ... A girl! Young Daffoll had spoken as though it were indeed something to get up at four in the morning for!

Peter wanted to hear more. Young Daffoll was quite ready to tell him.

No names, of course, but they were going to be married one day. His governor would be furious, of course, and they might have to run away, but she was game for anything. No, he'd only known her a fortnight, but it had been a matter of love at first sight--extraordinary thing--he'd thought he'd been head over ears before, but never anything like this--yes, as a matter of fact she was in a flower-shop--Trunter's in the High Street--her people had come down in the world--and so the golden picture unfolded as the gauze curtains were drawn back from the world, and the shoulder of the Grey Hill rose, like a cloud, before them.

Peter's heart beat faster as he listened to this story. Here was one of his dreams translated into actual fact. Would he one day also have some one for whom he would be ready to run to the end of the world, if furious parents demanded it? She would have, he was sure, red-gold hair and a wonderful smile.

They climbed the Grey Hill. There was with them now quite a company of persons--still shadow-shapes, for the mists were thick about the road, but soon all the butchers and bakers of the world--and, let it be remembered, all the lovers, would be revealed. Now, as they climbed the hill, silence fell--even young Daffoll was quiet; that, too, it seemed, was part of the ceremony.

The hill top was swiftly gained. The Giant's Finger, black and straight, like a needle, stood through the shadows. Beyond there would be the sea, and that was where the sun would rise, at present darkness. They all sat down on the stones that covered the summit--on either side of Peter there were figures, but Daffoll had vanished--it seemed that he had discovered his lady.

Peter, sitting meditating on the story that he had heard and feeling, suddenly, lonely and deserted, was conscious of a small shoe that touched his boot. It was, beyond argument, a friendly shoe--he could feel that in the inviting tap that it gave to him. He was aware also that his shoulder was touching another shoulder, and that that shoulder was soft and warm. Finally his hand touched another hand--fingers were intertwined.

There was much conversation out of the mist:

"Law, chrisy! Well, it's the last Easter morning for me--thiccy sun hides himself right enough--it's poor trade sitting shivering your toes."