"The stars--!" she cried. "Oh, what is it?"

"My cherry-tree--it's in flower--" said Young Gerard, and his voice trembled. She looked up quickly and saw that he was standing beside her, shaking the tree above her head. And now their eyes met and did not separate. He put out his hand and broke a branch from the tree and offered it to her. She took it from him slowly, as though she were in a dream, and laid it in her lap, and put her face in her hands and began to cry.

Young Gerard whispered, "Why are you crying?"

Thea said, "Oh, my wedding, my wedding! Only last year I thought of the night of my wedding and how it would be. It was not with torchlight and shouting and wine, but moonlight and silence and the scent of wild blossoms. And now I know that it was not the night of my wedding I dreamed of."

"What did you dream of?" asked Young Gerard.

"The night of my first love."

"Thea," said Young Gerard, and he knelt beside her.

"And my love's first kiss."

"Oh, Thea," said Young Gerard, and he took her hands.

"Why did you not feel their blows?" she said. "I felt them."

Their arms went round each other, and for the second time that night they kissed.

Young Gerard said, "I've always wondered if this would happen."

And Thea answered, "I didn't know it would be you."

"Didn't you? didn't you?" he whispered, stroking her head, wondering at himself doing what he had so often dreamed of doing.

"Oh," she faltered, "sometimes I thought--it might--be you, darling."

"Thea, Thea!"

"When I came over the Mount to swim in the river, and saw you in the distance among your sheep, there was a swifter river running through all my body. When I came every April to ask for your cherry-tree, what did it matter to me that it was not in bloom? for all my heart was wild with bloom, oh, Gerard, my--lover!"

"Oh, Thea, my love! What can I give you, Thea, I, a shepherd?"

"You were the lord of the earth, and you gave me its flowers and its birds and its secret waters. What more could you give me, you, a shepherd and my lord?"

"The wild white bloom of its fruit-trees that comes to the branches in April like love to the heart. I'll give it you now. Sit here, sit here!

I'll make you a bower of the cherry, and a crown, and a carpet too.

There's nothing in all April lovely and wild enough for you to-night, your bridal night, my lady and my darling!"

And in a great fit of joy he broke branch after branch from the tree as she sat at its foot, and set them about her, and filled her arms to overflowing, and crowned her with blossoms, and shook the bloom under her feet, till her shy happy face, paling and reddening by turns, looked out from a world of flowers and she cried between laughing and weeping, "Oh, Gerard, oh, you're drowning me!"

"It's the April floods," shouted Young Gerard, "and I must drown with you, Thea, Thea, Thea!" And he cast himself down beside her, and clasped her amid all the blossoming, and with his head on her shoulder kissed and kissed her till he was breathless and she as pale as the flowers that smothered their kisses.

And then suddenly he folded her in the green mantle, blossoms and all, and sprang up and lifted her to his breast till she lay like a child in the arms of its mother; and he picked up the lantern and said, "Now we will go away for ever."

"Where are we going?" she whispered with shining eyes.

"To the Wildbrooks," he said.

"To drown in the floods together?" She closed her eyes.

"There's a way through all floods," said Young Gerard.

And he ran with her over the hills with all his speed.

And Old Gerard returned to a hut as empty as it had been one-and-twenty years ago. And they say that Combe Ivy, having never set eyes on the boy in his life, swore that the shepherd's tale had been a fiction from first to last, and kept him a serf to the end of his days.

("What a night of stars it is!" said Martin Pippin, stretching his arms.

"Good heavens, Master Pippin," cried Joyce, "what a moment to mention it!"

"It is worth mentioning," said Martin, "at all moments when it is so. I would not think of mentioning it in the middle of a snowstorm."

"You should as little think of mentioning it," said Joyce, "in the middle of a story."

"But I am at the end of my story, Mistress Joyce."

Joscelyn: Preposterous! Oh! Oh, how can you say so? I am ashamed of you!

Martin: Dear Mistress Joscelyn, I thank you in charity's name for being that for me which I have never yet succeeded in being for myself.

Joscelyn: What! are you not ashamed to offer us a broken gift? Your story is like a cracked pitcher with half the milk leaked out. What was the secret of the Lantern, the Cloak, and the Cherry-tree?

Joyce: Who was the lovely lady, his mother? and who the old crone?

Jennifer: What was the end of the Rough Master of Coates?

Jessica: Did not the lovers drown in the floods?

Jane: And if they did not, what became of them?

"Please," said little Joan, "tell us why Young Gerard dreamed those dreams. Oh, please tell us what happened."

"Women's taste is for trifles," said Martin. "I have offered you my cake, and you wish only to pick off the nuts and the cherries."

"No," said Joan, "we wish you to put them on. Do you not love nuts and cherries on a cake?"

"More than anything," said Martin.)

A long while ago, dear maidens, there were Lords in Gay Street, and up and down the Street the cherry-trees bloomed in Spring as they bloomed nowhere else in Suss.e.x, and under the trees sang and danced the loveliest lads and la.s.ses in all England, with hearts like children.

And on all their holiday clothes they worked the leaf and branch and flower and fruit of the cherry. And they never wore anything else but their holiday clothes, because in Gay Street it was always holidays.

And a long while ago there were Gypsies on Nyetimber Common, the merriest Gypsies in the southlands, with the gayest tatters and the brightest eyes, and the maddest hearts for mirth-making. They were also makers of lanterns when they were anything else but what all Gypsies are.