cloud of heroes; but, when he was alone, he pranced a bit with them, and
promised himself that he too would reach the stars. So you may sometimes
see a little, grave boy walking through a field, unwatched as he
believes, suddenly fling his feet and his head every which way. An
active nature, romantic, without being dreamy and book-loving, is
not too prone to the attacks of love; such a one is likely to survive
unscathed to a maturer age. But Nedda had seduced him, partly by the
appeal of her touchingly manifest love and admiration, and chiefly by
her eyes, through which he seemed to see such a loyal, and loving little
soul looking. She had that indefinable something which lovers know that
they can never throw away. And he had at once made of her, secretly, the
crown of his active romanticism--the lady waiting for the spoils of his
lance. Queer is the heart of a boy--strange its blending of reality and
idealism!

Climbing at a great pace, he reached Malvern Beacon just as it came
dawn, and stood there on the top, watching. He had not much aesthetic
sense; but he had enough to be impressed by the slow paling of the stars
over space that seemed infinite, so little were its dreamy confines
visible in the May morning haze, where the quivering crimson flags and
spears of sunrise were forging up in a march upon the sky. That vision
of the English land at dawn, wide and mysterious, hardly tallied with
Mr. Cuthcott's view of a future dedicate to Park and Garden City.
While Derek stood there gazing, the first lark soared up and began its
ecstatic praise. Save for that song, silence possessed all the driven
dark, right out to the Severn and the sea, and the fastnesses of the
Welsh hills, and the Wrekin, away in the north, a black point in the
gray. For a moment dark and light hovered and clung together. Would
victory wing back into night or on into day? Then, as a town is taken,
all was over in one overmastering rush, and light proclaimed. Derek