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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Winds Farm, by Mrs. Molesworth
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Four Winds Farm
+
+Author: Mrs. Molesworth
+
+Illustrator: Walter Crane
+
+Release Date: May 21, 2012 [EBook #39748]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR WINDS FARM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Annie McGuire. This book was produced from
+scanned images of public domain material from the Internet
+Archive.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Book Cover]
+
+
+
+
+FOUR WINDS FARM
+
+
+
+
+      "In ... his dream he saw a child moving, and could divide the main
+      streams, at least, of the winds that had played on him, and study
+      so the first stage in that mental journey."
+
+  _The Child in the House._--WALTER H. PATER
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: And thus she led him out of the large, cold
+hall.--_Front._]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Title Page]
+
+FOUR WINDS FARM.
+
+BY MRS. MOLESWORTH:
+Author of "Carrots," "The Cuckoo Clock," &c.
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+BY
+WALTER CRANE.
+
+
+LONDON:
+MACMILLAN & CO:
+1887.
+
+
+
+
+_TO_
+MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER
+OLIVE
+I INSCRIBE THIS LITTLE STORY
+WHICH WE THOUGHT OF TOGETHER
+
+  LONDON, _June_ 1886.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+  CHAPTER I.       THE VOICES IN THE CHIMNEY                           1
+  CHAPTER II.      AT SCHOOL                                          15
+  CHAPTER III.     FLYING VISITS                                      29
+  CHAPTER IV.      A RAINBOW DANCE                                    43
+  CHAPTER V.       GOOD FOR EVIL                                      58
+  CHAPTER VI.      ORGAN TONES                                        73
+  CHAPTER VII.     THE BIG HOUSE AND THE LADY                         87
+  CHAPTER VIII.    LITTLE FERGUS                                     102
+  CHAPTER IX.      MUSIC AND COUNSEL                                 117
+  CHAPTER X.       THE STORY OF THE SEA-GULL                         132
+  CHAPTER XI.      DRAWN TWO WAYS                                    150
+  CHAPTER XII.     LEARNING TO WAIT                                  166
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  AND THUS SHE LED HIM OUT OF THE LARGE, COLD HALL              _Front._
+
+  WAS IT FANCY THAT HE HAD SEEN A WAVING, FLUTTERING FORM
+      BESIDE HIM?                                              _Page_ 30
+
+  "NOW FOR OUR DANCE--OUR RAINBOW DANCE, SISTERS--NO NEED TO
+      WAKE HIM ROUGHLY. WE NEED ONLY KISS HIS EYELIDS"                47
+
+  "LOOK HERE, DOLLY," AND HE HELD OUT TO HER THE POOR COPY-BOOK
+      WHICH HE HAD ALREADY TAKEN OUT OF HIS SATCHEL                   67
+
+  AND WHEN SHE SAT DOWN TO PLAY THE LIGHT SPARKLED AND GLOWED ON
+      HER FAIR HAIR, MAKING IT LOOK LIKE GOLD                        120
+
+  "ARE YOU NOT WELL, MOTHER?" HE SAID GENTLY                         153
+
+  IT WAS FERGUS, LITTLE LAME FERGUS, MOUNTED ON A TINY ROUGH-COATED
+      PONY, COMING TOWARDS HIM                                       178
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE VOICES IN THE CHIMNEY
+
+  "Wherefore and whence we are ye cannot know."
+
+  "The Winds' Song," _Light of Asia._--EDWIN ARNOLD
+
+
+The first thing that little Gratian Conyfer could remember in his life
+was hearing the wind blow. It had hushed him to sleep, it had scolded
+him when he was naughty, it had laughed with him at merry times, it had
+wailed and sobbed when he was in sorrow.
+
+For the wind has many ways of blowing, and no one knew this better than
+Gratian, and no one had more right to boast an intimate acquaintance
+with the wind than he. You would be sure to say so yourself if you could
+see the place where the boy was born and bred--"Four Winds Farm."
+
+It had not come by this name without reason, though no one still living
+when Gratian was a boy, could tell how long it had borne it, or by whom
+it had been bestowed. I wish I could take you there--were it but for
+five minutes, were it even in a dream. I wish I could make you _feel_
+what I can fancy I feel myself when I think of it--the wonderful fresh
+breath on one's face even on a calm day standing at the door of the
+farm-house, the sense of life and mischief and wild force about you,
+though held in check for the moment, the knowledge that the wind--the
+winds rather, all four of them, are there somewhere, hidden or
+pretending to be asleep, maybe, but ready all the same to burst out at a
+moment's notice. And when they do burst out--on a blowy day that is to
+say--ah then, I wouldn't advise you to stand at the farm-house door,
+unless you want to be hurled out of the way more unceremoniously than
+you bargained for.
+
+It was a queer site perhaps to have chosen for a dwelling-place. Up
+among the moors that stretched for miles and miles on all sides, on such
+lofty ground that it was no wonder the trees refused to grow high, for
+it was hard work enough to grow at all, poor things, and to keep their
+footing when they had done so. They did look battered about and
+storm-tossed--all except the pines, who are used to that kind of life, I
+suppose, and did their duty manfully as sentinels on guard round the
+old brown house, in which, as I said, the boy Gratian first opened his
+baby eyes to the light.
+
+Since that day nine winters and summers had passed. He was called a big
+boy now. He slept alone in a room away up a little stair by itself in a
+corner--an outside corner--of the farm-house. He walked, three miles
+there and three miles back, to school every day, carrying his books and
+his dinner in a satchel, along a road that would have seemed lonely and
+dreary to any but a moorland child--a road indeed that was little but a
+sheep-track the best part of the way. He spent his evenings in a corner
+of the large straggling kitchen, so quiet that no one would have guessed
+a child, above all a boy, was there; his holidays, the fine weather ones
+at least, out on the moor among the heather for the most part, in the
+company of Jonas the old shepherd, and Watch the collie dog. But he
+never thought his life lonely, though he had neither brother nor sister,
+and no one schoolfellow among the score or so at the village school that
+was more to him than another; he never thought about himself at all in
+that sort of way; he took for granted that all about him was as it
+should be, and if things seemed wrong sometimes he had the good sense
+to think it was very probably his own fault.
+
+But he found things puzzling; he was a child who thought a great deal
+more than he spoke; he would not have been so puzzled if he had had more
+of the habit of putting his thoughts into words. Hitherto it had not
+seemed to matter much, life had been a simple affair, and what he did
+not understand he forgot about. But lately, quite lately, he had
+changed; his soul was beginning to grow, perhaps that was it, and felt
+now and then as if it wanted new clothes, and the feeling was strange.
+And then it isn't everybody who is born and bred where the four winds of
+heaven meet!
+
+What was Gratian thinking of one Sunday evening when, quiet as usual, he
+sat in his corner? He had been at church and at the Sunday School; but I
+am afraid he could not have told you much about the sermon, and in his
+class he had been mildly reproved for inattention.
+
+"You must go to bed," said his mother; "it is quite time, and you seem
+sleepy."
+
+The boy rose and came round to the table at which sat his father and
+mother, each with a big book which Gratian knew well by sight--for it
+was only on Sunday evenings that the farmer and his wife had time for
+reading, and their books lasted them a good while. In fact they had been
+reading them fifty-two evenings of each year ever since the boy could
+recollect, and the marks, of perforated cardboard on green ribbon--his
+father's bore the words "Remember me," and his mother's "Forget me
+not"--which once, before he could read, he had regarded with mysterious
+awe, did not seem to him to have moved on many pages.
+
+He stood at the table for a moment before his mother looked up; he was
+vaguely wondering to himself if he too would have a big book with a
+green ribbon-marker when he should be as old as his father and mother;
+did everybody? he felt half-inclined to ask his mother, but before he
+had decided if he should, she scattered his thoughts by glancing up at
+him quickly. She was quick and alert in everything she said and did,
+except perhaps in reading.
+
+"Good-night, Gratian. Get quickly to bed, my boy."
+
+"Good-night, mother, good-night, father," he said, as his mother kissed
+him, and his father laid his hand on the child's curly head with a
+kindly gesture which he only used on Sunday evenings.
+
+"Gratian is in one of his dreams again," said the mother, when the
+little figure had disappeared.
+
+"Ay," said her husband, "it's to be hoped he'll grow out of it, but he's
+young yet."
+
+Gratian had stopped a moment on his way across the red-tiled passage, at
+one end of which was the white stone staircase; he stopped at the front
+door which stood slightly ajar, and stepped out into the porch. It was
+autumn, but early autumn only. Something of the fragrance of a summer
+night was still about, but there was not the calm and restfulness of the
+summer; on the contrary, there was a stirring and a murmuring, and the
+clouds overhead were scudding hurriedly before the moon, as if she were
+scolding them and they in a hurry to escape, thought Gratian; for there
+was a certain fretfulness in her air--a disquiet and unsettledness which
+struck him.
+
+"Either she is angry and they are running away, or--perhaps that is
+it--she is sending them messages as fast as they can take them, like the
+rooks after they have been having a long talk together," he said to
+himself. Then as a figure came round the side of the house on its way to
+what was really the kitchen--though the big room which Gratian had just
+left went by the name--"Jonas," said the child aloud, "is there
+anything the matter up in the sky to-night?"
+
+The old shepherd stood still; he rested the empty milkpail he was
+carrying on the ground, and gazed up to where Gratian was pointing.
+
+"I cannot say," he answered, "but the summer is gone, little master. Up
+here the winter comes betimes, we must look for the storms and the
+tempests again before long."
+
+"But not yet, oh not just yet, Jonas; I can't think why they don't get
+tired of fighting and rushing about and tearing each other--the winds
+and the rain and the clouds and all of them up there. Listen, Jonas,
+what is that?"
+
+For a faint, low breath came round the end of the house like a long
+drawn sigh, yet with something of menace in its tone.
+
+"Ah yes, Master Gratian. It's the winter spirit looking round a bit as I
+said. They'll be at it to-night, I fancy--just a spree to keep their
+hands in as it were. But go to bed, little master, and dream of the
+summer. There'll be some fine days yet awhile," and old Jonas lifted the
+pail again. "Madge must give this a scalding before milking time
+to-morrow morning, careless wench that she is," he said in a
+half-grumbling tone as he disappeared.
+
+And Gratian climbed upstairs to bed.
+
+He had a candle, and matches to light it with, in his room, but the
+moonlight was so bright, though fitful, that he thought it better than
+any candle. He undressed, not quickly as his mother had told him, I
+fear, standing at the curtainless window and staring out, up rather,
+where the clouds were still fussing about "as if they were dusting the
+moon's face," said Gratian to himself, laughing softly at this new
+fancy. And even after he was in bed he peeped out from time to time to
+watch the queer shadows and gleams, the quickly following light and
+darkness that flitted across the white walls of his little room. It was
+only an attic, but I think almost any little boy would have thought it a
+nice room. Mrs. Conyfer kept it beautifully clean to begin with, and
+there was a fireplace, and a good cupboard in the wall, and a splendid
+view of moor and sky from the window. Gratian was very proud of his
+room; he had only had it a short time, only since the day he was nine
+years old, and it made him feel he was really growing a big boy. But
+to-night he was hardly in his usual good spirits. It weighed on his
+mind that the teacher at the Sunday School had been displeased with
+him; for he knew him to be kind and patient, and Gratian liked to win
+his smile of approval.
+
+"It is always the same with me," thought the little boy, "at school
+every day too I am the stupidest. I wish there were no lessons in the
+world. I wish there were only birds, and lambs, and hills, and moors,
+and the wind--most of all the wind, and no books--no books, and----"
+
+But here he fell asleep!
+
+When he woke the room was quite dark; the clouds had hung their dusters
+over the moon's face by mistake perhaps, or else she had got tired of
+shining and had turned in for a nap, thought Gratian sleepily. He shut
+his eyes again, and curled himself round the other way, and would have
+been asleep again in half a minute, but for a sound which suddenly
+reached his ears. Some one was talking near him! Gratian opened his eyes
+again, forgetting that that could not help him to hear, and listened.
+Yes, it was a voice--two voices; he heard one stop and the other reply,
+and now and then they seemed to be talking together, and gradually as he
+listened he discovered that they came from the direction of the
+fireplace. Could it be the voices of his father and mother coming up
+from below, through the chimney, somehow? No, their voices were not so
+strangely soft and sadly sweet; besides their room was not under his,
+nor did they ever talk in the middle of the night.
+
+"They are too sleepy for that," thought Gratian with a little smile. For
+the farmer and his wife were very hard-working, and even on Sunday they
+were tired. It was a long walk to church, and unless the weather were
+very bad they always went twice.
+
+Gratian listened again, more intently than ever. The voices went on; he
+could distinguish the different tones--more than two he began to fancy.
+But how provoking it was; he _could_ not catch the words. And from the
+strain of listening he almost began to fall asleep again, when at
+last--yes, there was no doubt of it now--he caught the sound of his own
+name.
+
+"Gratian, Gra--tian," in a very soft inquiring tone; "ye--es, he is a
+good boy on the whole, but he is foolish too. He is wasting his time."
+
+"Sadly so--sad--ly so--o," hummed back the second voice. "He only
+dreams--dreams are very well in their way, they are a beginning
+sometimes, so--me--ti--imes. But he will never do anything even with
+his dreams unless he works too--wo--orks too."
+
+"Ah no--no--o. All must work save the will-o'-the-wisps, and what good
+are they? What good are the--ey?"
+
+Then the two, or the three, maybe even the four, Gratian could not be
+sure but that there were perhaps four, voices seemed all to hum
+together, "What good are the--ey?" Till with a sudden rushing call one
+broke in with a new cry.
+
+"Sisters," it said, "we must be off. Our work awai--aits us, awai--aits
+us."
+
+And softly they all faded away, or was it perhaps that Gratian fell
+asleep?
+
+He woke the next morning with a confused remembrance of what he had
+heard, and for some little time he could not distinguish how much he had
+dreamt from what had reached his ears before he fell asleep. For all
+through the night a vague feeling had haunted him of the soft, humming
+murmur, and two or three times when he half woke and turned on his side,
+he seemed to hear again the last echoes of the voices in the chimney.
+
+"But it couldn't have been them," he said to himself as he sat up in his
+little bed, his hands clasped round his knees, as he was very fond of
+sitting; "they said they were going away to their work. What work could
+they have--voices, just voices in the chimney? And they said I was
+wasting my time. What did they mean? _I'm_ not like a will-o'-the-wisp;
+I don't dance about and lead people into bogs. I----"
+
+But just then his mother's voice sounded up the stairs.
+
+"Gratian--aren't you up yet? Father is out, and the breakfast will be
+ready in ten minutes. Quick, quick, my boy."
+
+Gratian started; he put one pink foot out of bed and looked at it as if
+he had never seen five toes before, then he put out the other, and at
+last found himself altogether on the floor. It was rather a chilly
+morning, and he was only allowed cold water in a queer old tub that he
+could remember being dreadfully afraid of when he was a _very_ little
+boy--it had seemed so big to him then. But he was not so babyish now; he
+plunged bravely into the old tub, and the shock of the cold completely
+awakened him, so that he looked quite bright and rosy when he came into
+the kitchen a few minutes later.
+
+His mother looked up from the pot of oatmeal porridge she was ladling
+out into little bowls for the breakfast.
+
+"That's right," she said; "you look better than you did last night. Try
+and have a good day at school to-day, Gratian. Monday's always the best
+day for a fresh start."
+
+Gratian listened, but did not answer. It generally took him a good while
+to get his speeches ready, except perhaps when he was alone with Jonas
+and Watch. It seemed easier to him to speak to Jonas than to anybody
+else. He began eating his porridge--slowly, porridge and milk spoonfuls
+turn about, staring before him as he did so.
+
+"Mother," he said at last, "is it naughty to dream?"
+
+"Naughty to dream," repeated his mother, "what do you mean? To dream
+when you're asleep?"
+
+"No--I don't think it's that kind," began the child, but his mother
+interrupted him. Her own words of the night before returned to her mind.
+Could Gratian have overheard them?
+
+"You mean dreaming when you should be working, perhaps?" she said.
+"Well, yes--without saying it's naughty, it's certainly not good. It's
+wasting one's time. Everybody's got work to do in this world, and it
+needs all one's attention. You'll find it out for yourself, but it's a
+good thing to find it out young. Most things are harder to learn old
+than young, Gratian."
+
+Gratian listened, but again without speaking.
+
+"It's very queer," he was thinking to himself--"mother says the same
+thing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+AT SCHOOL
+
+      "But there all apart,
+      On his little seat
+  A little figure is set awry."
+
+  C. C. FRASER TYTLER
+
+
+Gratian shouldered his satchel and set off to school. He had some new
+thoughts in his head this morning, but still he was not too busy with
+them to forget to look about him. It was evident that old Jonas had been
+right; the storm spirits had been about in the night. The fallen autumn
+leaves which had been lying in heaps the day before were scattered
+everywhere, the little pools of water left by yesterday's rain had
+almost disappeared, overhead the clouds were gradually settling down in
+quiet masses as if tired and sleepy with the rushing about of the night
+before.
+
+It was always fresh up at Four Winds Farm, but to-day there was a
+particularly brisk and inspiriting feeling in the air; and as Gratian
+ran down the bit of steep hill between the gate and the road which he
+partially followed to school, he laughed to himself as a little wind
+came kissing him on the cheek.
+
+"Good morning, wind," he said aloud. "Which of them are you, I wonder?"
+And some old verses he had often heard his mother say came into his
+head--
+
+  "North winds send hail,
+    South winds bring rain,
+  East winds we bewail,
+    West winds, blow amain."
+
+"I think you must be west wind, but you're not blowing amain this
+morning. Never mind; you can when you like, I know. _You_ can work with
+a will. There now--how funny--I'm saying it myself; I wonder if that's
+what the voices meant I should do--work with a will, work with a will,"
+and Gratian sang the words over softly to himself as he ran along.
+
+As I said, his road to school was great part of the way nothing but a
+sheep-track. It was not that there did not exist a proper road, but this
+proper road, naturally enough, went winding about a good deal, for it
+was meant for carts and horses as well as or more than for little boys,
+and no carts or horses could ever have got along it had the road run in
+a direct line from the Farm to the village. For the village lay low and
+the Farm very high. Gratian followed the road for the first half-mile or
+so, that is to say as long as he could have gained nothing by quitting
+it, but then came a corner at which he left it to meander gradually down
+the high ground, while he scrambled over a low wall of loose stones and
+found himself on what he always considered his own particular path. At
+this point began the enjoyment of his walk, for a few minutes carried
+him round the brow of the hill, out of sight of the road and of
+everything save the sky above and the great stretching moorland beneath.
+And this was what Gratian loved. He used to throw himself on the short
+tufty grass, his elbows on the ground, and his chin in his hands--his
+satchel wherever it liked, and lie there gazing and dreaming and wishing
+he could stay thus always.
+
+He did the same this morning, but somehow his dreams were not quite so
+undisturbed. He was no longer sure that he would like to lie there
+always doing nothing but dreaming, and now that he had got this idea
+into his head everything about him seemed to be repeating it. He looked
+at the heather, faded and dull now, and remembered how, a while ago, the
+bees had been hard at work on the moors gathering their stores. "What a
+lot of trouble it must be to make honey!" he thought. He felt his own
+little rough coat, and smiled to think that not so very long ago it had
+been walking about the hills on a different back. "It isn't much trouble
+for the sheep to let their wool grow, certainly," he said to himself,
+"but it's a lot of work for lots of people before wool is turned into a
+coat for a little boy. Nothing can be done without work, I suppose, and
+I'd rather be a bee than a sheep a good deal, though I'd rather be old
+Watch than either, and _he_ works hard--yes, he certainly does."
+
+And then suddenly he remembered that if he didn't bestir himself he
+would be late at school, which wouldn't be at all the good start his
+mother had advised him to make as it was Monday morning.
+
+He went on pretty steadily for the rest of the way, only stopping about
+six times, and that not for long together, otherwise he certainly would
+not have got to school before morning lessons were over. But, as it was,
+he got an approving nod from the teacher for being in very good time.
+For the teacher could not help liking Gratian, though, as a pupil, he
+gave him plenty of trouble, seeming really sometimes as if he _could_
+not learn.
+
+"And yet," thought the master--for he was a young man who did
+think--"one cannot look into the child's face without seeing there are
+brains behind it, and brains of no common kind maybe. But I haven't got
+the knack of making him use them; for nine years old he is exceedingly
+stupid."
+
+Things went better to-day. Gratian was full of his new ideas and really
+meant to try. But even trying with all one's might and main won't build
+Rome in a day. Gratian had idled and dreamed through lesson-time too
+often to lose the bad habit all at once. He saw himself passed as usual
+by children younger than he, who had been a much shorter time at school,
+and his face grew very melancholy, and two or three big tears gathered
+more than once in his eyes while he began to say in his own mind that
+trying was no good.
+
+Morning school was over at twelve; most of the children lived in the
+village, and some but a short way off, so that they could easily run
+home for their dinner and be back in time for afternoon lessons; Gratian
+Conyfer was the only one whose home was too far off for him to go back
+in the middle of the day. So he brought his dinner with him and ate it
+in winter beside the schoolroom fire, in summer in a corner of the
+playground, where, under a tree, stood an old bench. This was the
+dining-room he liked best, and though now summer was past and autumn
+indeed fast fading into winter, Gratian had not yet deserted his summer
+quarters, and here the schoolmaster found him half an hour or so before
+it was time for the children's return.
+
+"Are you not cold there, my boy?" he asked kindly.
+
+"No, thank you, sir," Gratian answered, and looking more closely at him
+the master saw he had been crying.
+
+"What is the matter, Gratian?" he asked. "You've not been quarrelling or
+fighting I'm sure, you never do, and as for lessons they went a bit
+better to-day, I think, didn't they?"
+
+But at these words Gratian only turned his face to the wall and
+wept--wiping his eyes from time to time on the cuff of the linen blouse
+which he wore at school over his coat.
+
+The schoolmaster's heart was touched, though he was pretty well used to
+tears. But Gratian's seemed different somehow.
+
+"What is it, my boy?" he said again.
+
+"It's--it's just that, sir--lessons, I mean. I did try, sir. I meant to
+work with a will, I did indeed."
+
+"But you did do better. I knew you were trying," said the teacher
+quietly.
+
+Gratian lifted his tear stained face and looked at the master in
+surprise.
+
+"Did you, sir?" he said. "It seemed to me to go worser and worser."
+
+"No, I didn't think so. And sometimes, Gratian, when we think we are
+doing worse, it shows we are really doing better. We're getting up a
+little higher, you see, and beginning to look on and to see how far we
+have to go, and that we might have got on faster. When we're not
+climbing at all, but just staying lazily at the foot of the hill, we
+don't know anything about how steep and high it is."
+
+Gratian had quite left off crying by now and was listening attentively.
+The master's words needed no explanation to him; he had caught the sense
+and meaning at once.
+
+"Everybody has to work if they're to do any good, haven't they, sir?" he
+asked.
+
+"_Everybody_," agreed the master.
+
+"But wouldn't it be better if everybody _liked_ their work--couldn't
+they do it better if they did?" he asked. "That's what I'm vexed about,
+partly. I don't _like_ lessons, sir," he said in a tone of deep
+conviction. "I'm afraid I'm too stupid ever to like them."
+
+The schoolmaster could scarcely keep from smiling.
+
+"You're not so very old yet, Gratian," he said. "It's just possible you
+may change. Besides, in some ways the beginning's the worst. You can't
+read very easily yet--not well enough to enjoy reading to yourself?"
+
+"No, sir," said the boy, hanging his head again.
+
+"Well, then, wait a while and see if you don't change about books and
+lessons."
+
+"And if I don't ever change," said Gratian earnestly. "Can people ever
+do things well that they don't like doing?"
+
+The schoolmaster looked at him. It was a curious question for a boy of
+nine years old.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I hope so, indeed," and his mind went back to a time
+when he had looked forward to being something very different from a
+village schoolmaster, when he could have fancied no employment could be
+less to his liking than teaching. "I hope so, indeed," he repeated. "And
+if you work with a will you--get to like the work whatever it is."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the boy, and the master turned away. Then a
+thought struck him.
+
+"What do you best like doing, Gratian?"
+
+The boy hesitated. Then he grew a little red.
+
+"It isn't doing anything really," he said; "it's what mother calls
+dreaming--out on the moors, sir, that's the best of all--with the wind
+all about, and nothing but it and the moor and the sky. And the feel of
+it keeps in me. Even when I'm at home in the kitchen by the fire, if I
+shut my eyes I can fancy it."
+
+The master nodded his head.
+
+"Dreaming is no harm in its right place. But if one did nothing but
+dream, the dreams would lose their colour, I expect."
+
+"That's something like what _they_ said, again," thought the boy to
+himself.
+
+The schoolmaster walked away. "A child with something uncommon about
+him, I fancy," he said in his mind. "One sees that sometimes in a child
+living as much alone with nature as he does. But I scarcely think he's
+clever, and then the rough daily life will most likely nip in the bud
+any sort of poetry or imagination that there may be germs of."
+
+He didn't quite understand Gratian, and then, too, he didn't take into
+account what it is to be born under the protection of the four winds of
+heaven.
+
+But Gratian felt much happier after his talk with the master, and
+afternoon lessons went better. They were generally easier than the
+morning ones, and often more interesting. This afternoon it was a
+geography lesson. The master drew out the great frame with the big maps
+hanging on it, and explained to the children as he went along. It was
+about the north to-day, far away up in the north, where the ice-fields
+spread for hundreds of miles and everything is in a sleep of whiteness
+and silence. And Gratian listened with parted lips and earnest eyes. He
+seemed to see it all. "I wish I knew as much as he does," he thought. "I
+wish I could read it in books to myself."
+
+And for the first time there came home to him a faint, shadowy feeling
+of what books are--of the treasures buried in the rows and rows of
+little black letters that he so often wished had never been invented.
+
+"Yes," he said to himself, "I'll try to learn so that I can read it all
+to myself."
+
+It was growing already a little dusk when he set off on his walk home.
+The evenings were beginning "to draw in" as the country folk say.
+
+But little cared the merry throng who poured out of the schoolroom gate
+as five o'clock rang from the church clock, chattering, racing, tumbling
+over each other, pushing, pulling, shouting, but all in play. For they
+are a good-natured set, though rough and ready--these hardy moor
+children. And they grow into honest and sturdy men and women, hospitable
+and kindly, active and thrifty, though they care for little beyond their
+own corner of the world, and would scarcely find it out if all the books
+and "learning" in existence were suddenly made an end of.
+
+There are mischievous imps among them, nevertheless, and none was more
+so than Tony, the miller's son. He meant no harm, but he loved teasing,
+and Gratian, gentle and silent, was often a tempting victim. This
+evening, as sometimes happened, a dozen or so of the children whose
+homes lay at the end of the village, past which was the road to the
+Farm, went on together.
+
+"We'll run a bit of the road home with thee, Gratian," said Tony.
+
+And though the boy did not much care for their company, he thought it
+would be unfriendly to say so, nor did he like to refuse when Tony
+insisted on carrying his satchel for him. "There's no books in mine,"
+he said; "I took them home at dinner-time, and I'm sure your shoulders
+will be aching before you get to the Farm with the weight of yours. My
+goodness, how many books have you got in it? I say," as he pretended to
+examine them, "here's Gratian Conyfer going to be head o' the school,
+and put us all to shame with his learning."
+
+But as Gratian said nothing he seemed satisfied, and after stopping a
+minute or two to arrange the satchel again, ran after the others.
+
+"It's getting dark, Tony," said his sister Dolly, "we mustn't go
+farther. Good-night, Gratian, we've brought you a bit of your way--Tony,
+and Ralph, and I," for the other children had gradually fallen off.
+
+"Yes--a good mile of it, thank you, Dolly. And thank you, Tony, for
+helping me with my satchel--that's right, thank you," as Tony was
+officiously fastening it on.
+
+"Good-night," said Tony; "you're no coward any way, Gratian. I shouldn't
+like to have all that way to go in the dark, for it will be dark soon.
+There are queer things to be seen on the moor after sunset, folks say."
+
+"Ay, so they say," said Ralph.
+
+"I'll be home in no time," Gratian called back. For he did not know what
+fear was.
+
+But after he had ran awhile, he felt more tired than usual. Was it
+perhaps the fit of crying he had had at dinner-time that made him so
+weary? He plodded on, however, shifting his satchel from time to time,
+it felt so strangely heavy, and queer tales he had heard of the little
+mountain man that would jump on your shoulders, and cling on till he had
+strangled you, unless you remembered the right spell to force him off
+with; or of the brownies who catch children with invisible ropes, and
+make them run round and round without their knowing they have left the
+straight road, till they drop with fatigue, came into his mind.
+
+"There must be something wrong with my satchel," he said at last, and he
+pulled it round so that he could open it. He drew his hand out with a
+cry of vexation and distress. Tony, yes it must have been Tony--though
+at first he was half-inclined to think the mountain men or the brownies
+had been playing their tricks on him--Tony had filled the satchel with
+heavy stones, and had no doubt taken out the books at the time he was
+pretending to examine them. It was too bad. And what had he done with
+the books?
+
+"He may have taken them home with him, he may have hidden them and get
+them as he passes by, or he may have left them on the moor, and if it
+rains they'll be spoilt, and the copy-books are sure to blow away."
+
+For in his new ardour, Gratian had brought home books of all kinds,
+meaning to work so well that his master should be quite astonished the
+next day, and the poor little fellow sat down on the heather, his arms
+and shoulders aching and sore, and let the tears roll down his face.
+
+Suddenly a slight sound, something between a murmur and a rustle, some
+little way from him, made him look round. It was an unusually still
+evening; Gratian had scarcely ever known the moorland road so still--it
+could not be the wind then! He looked round him curiously, and for a
+moment or two forgot his troubles in his wonder as to what it could be.
+There it was, again, and the boy started to his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+FLYING VISITS
+
+  "I see thee not, I clasp thee not;
+    Yet feel I thou art nigh."
+
+  _To the Summer Wind._--SIR NOEL PATON
+
+
+Yes--he heard it again, and this time it sounded almost like voices
+speaking. He turned to the side whence it came, and to his surprise, in
+the all but darkness, there glimmered for an instant or two a sudden
+light. It was scarcely indeed to be called light; it was more like the
+reflection of faint colour on the dark background.
+
+"It is like a black rainbow," said Gratian to himself. "I wonder if
+there are some sorts of rainbows that come in the night. I wonder----"
+but suddenly a waft of soft though fresh air on his cheek made him
+start. All around him, but an instant before, had been so still that he
+could not understand it, and his surprise was not lessened when a voice
+sounded close to his ear.
+
+"What about your books, Gratian? How are you going to find them?"
+
+[Illustration: Was it fancy that he had seen a waving, fluttering form
+beside him?]
+
+The boy turned to look who was speaking. His first thought was that one
+of his companions, knowing of the trick Tony had played him, had run
+after him with the books. But the figure beside him was not that of one
+of his companions--was it that of any one at all? Gratian rubbed his
+eyes; the faint light that remained,--the last rays of reflected
+sunset--were more bewildering than decided night; was it fancy that he
+had heard a voice speaking? was it fancy that he had seen a waving,
+fluttering form beside him?
+
+No, there it was again; softly moving garments, with something of a
+green radiance on them, a sweet, fair face, like a face in a dream, seen
+but for an instant and then hidden again by a wave of mist that seemed
+to come between it and him, a gentle yet cheery voice repeating again--
+
+"What of the books, Gratian? How are you going to find them?"
+
+"I don't know," said the boy. "Who are you? How do you know about them,
+and can you help me to find them?"
+
+But the sound of his own voice, rough and sharp, and yet thick it
+somehow seemed, in comparison with the soft clearness of the tones he
+had just heard, fell on his ears strangely. It seemed to awake him.
+
+"Am I dreaming?" he said to himself. "There is no one there. How silly
+of me to speak to nobody! I might as well be speaking to the wind!"
+
+"Exactly," said the voice, followed this time by a little burst of the
+sweetest laughter Gratian had ever heard. "Come, Gratian, don't be so
+dull; what's wrong with your eyes? Come, dear, if you do want to find
+your books, that's to say. You see me now, don't you?"
+
+And again the fresh waft passed across his cheeks, and again the flutter
+of radiant green and the fair face caught his eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I see you now--or--or I did see you half a second ago,"
+for even while he said it the vision had seemed to fade.
+
+"That's right--then come."
+
+He was opening his lips to ask how and where, but he had not time, nor
+did he need to do so. The breeze, slight as it was, seemed to draw him
+onwards, and the faint, quivering green light gleamed out from moment to
+moment before him. It was evident which way he was to go. Only for an
+instant a misgiving came over him and he hesitated.
+
+"I say," he called out, "you mustn't be offended, but you're not a
+will-o'-the-wisp, are you? I don't want to follow one of them. They're
+no good."
+
+Again the soft laughter, but it sounded kind and pleasant, not the least
+mocking.
+
+"That's right. Never have anything to say to will-o'-the-wisps, Gratian.
+But I'm not one--see--I keep on my way. I don't dance and jerk from side
+to side."
+
+It was true; it was wonderful how fast she--if it were she, the voice
+sounded like a woman's--got over the ground and Gratian after her,
+without faltering or stumbling or even getting out of breath.
+
+"Here we are," she said, "stoop down Gratian--there are your books
+hidden beside the furze bush at your feet. And it is going to rain; they
+would have been quite spoilt by morning even if I had done my best. It
+was an ugly trick of Master Tony's. There now, have you got them?"
+
+"Yes, thank you," said Gratian, fumbling for his satchel, still hanging
+round his shoulders, though to his surprise empty, for he did not
+remember having thrown the stones out, "I have got them all now. Thank
+you _very_ much whoever you are. I would like to kiss you if only I
+could see you long enough at a time."
+
+But a breath like a butterfly's kiss fluttered on to his cheek, and the
+gleam of two soft bluey-green eyes seemed for the hundredth part of a
+second to dance into his own.
+
+"I have kissed you," said the voice, now sounding farther away, "and not
+for the first nor the thousandth time if you had known it! But you are
+waking up a little now; our baby boy is learning to see and to hear and
+to feel. Good-bye--good-night, Gratian. Work your best with your books
+to-night--get home as fast as you can. By the bye it is late; shall I
+speed you on your way? You will know how far that is to-morrow
+morning--look for the furze bush on the right of the path when it turns
+for the last time, and you will see if I don't know how to help you home
+in no time."
+
+And almost before the last words had faded, Gratian felt himself gently
+lifted off his feet--a rush, a soft whiz, and he was standing by the
+Farm gate, while before him shone out the warm ruddy glow from the
+unshuttered windows of the big kitchen, and his mother's voice, as she
+heard the latch click, called out to him--
+
+"Is that you, Gratian? You are very late; if it had not been such a very
+still, beautiful evening I should really have begun to think you had
+been blown away coming over the moor."
+
+And Gratian rubbed his eyes as he came blinking into the kitchen. His
+mother's words puzzled him, though he knew she was only joking. It _was_
+a very still night--that was the funny part of it.
+
+"Why, you look for all the world as if you'd been having a nap, my boy,"
+she went on, and Gratian stood rubbing his hands before the fire,
+wondering if perhaps he had. He was half-inclined to tell his mother of
+Tony's trick and what had come of it. But she might say he had dreamt
+it, and then it would seem ill-natured to Tony.
+
+"And I don't want mother and father to think I'm always dreaming and
+fancying," he thought to himself, for just at that moment the farmer's
+footsteps were heard as he came in to supper. "Anyway I want them to see
+I mean to get on better at school than I have done."
+
+He did not speak much at table, but he tried to help his mother by
+passing to her whatever she wanted, and jumping up to fetch anything
+missing. And it was a great pleasure when his father once or twice
+nodded and smiled at him approvingly.
+
+"He's getting to be quite a handy lad--eh, mother?" he said.
+
+As soon as supper was over and cleared away, Gratian set to work at his
+lessons with a light heart. It was wonderful how much easier and more
+interesting they seemed now that he really gave his whole attention, and
+especially since he had tried to understand what the teacher had said
+about them.
+
+"If only I had tried like this before, how much further on I should be
+now," he could not help saying to himself with a sigh. "And the queer
+thing is, that the more I try the more I want to try. My head begins to
+feel so much tidier."
+
+But with all the goodwill in the world, at nine years old a head cannot
+do _very_ much at a time. Gratian had finished all the lessons he _had_
+to do for the next day and was going back in his books with the wish to
+learn over again, and more thoroughly, much that he had not before
+really taken in or understood, when to his distress his poor little head
+bumped down on to the volume before him, and he found by the start that
+he was going to sleep! Still it wasn't very late--mother had said
+nothing yet about bed-time.
+
+"It is that I have got into such a stupid, lazy way of learning, I
+suppose," he said to himself, getting up from his seat. "Perhaps the air
+will wake me up a bit," and he went through the little entrance hall and
+stood in the porch, looking out.
+
+It was a very different night from the last. All was so still and calm
+that for once the name of the Farm did not seem to suit it.
+
+Gratian leant against the door-post, looking up to the sky, and just
+then, like the evening before, old Jonas, followed by Watch, came round
+the corner.
+
+"Good evening, Jonas," said the boy. "How quiet it is to-night! There
+wasn't much of a storm after all."
+
+"No, Master Gratian," replied the shepherd; "I told you they were only
+a-knocking about a bit to keep their hands in;" and he too stood still
+and looked up at the sky.
+
+"I don't like it so still as this," said the boy. "It doesn't seem
+right. I came out here for a breath of air to wake me up. I've been
+working hard at my lessons, Jonas; I'm going always to work hard now.
+But I wish I wasn't sleepy."
+
+"Sign that you've worked enough for to-night, maybe," said Jonas. But as
+he spoke, Gratian started.
+
+"Jonas," he said, "did you see a sort of light down there--across the
+grass there in front, a sort of golden-looking flash? ah, there it is
+again," and just at the same moment a soft, almost warm waft of air
+seemed to float across his face, and Gratian fancied he heard the words,
+"good boy, good boy."
+
+"'Tis a breath of south wind getting up," said old Jonas quietly. "I've
+often thought to myself that there's colours in the winds, Master
+Gratian, though folk would laugh at me for an old silly if I said so."
+
+"_Colours_," repeated Gratian, "do you mean many colours? I wasn't
+saying anything about the wind though, Jonas--did you feel it too? It
+was over there--look, Jonas--it seemed to come from behind the big
+bush."
+
+"Due south, due south," said Jonas. "And golden yellow is my fancy for
+the south."
+
+"And what for the north, and for the----" began Gratian eagerly, but his
+mother's voice interrupted him.
+
+"Bedtime, Gratian," she called, "come and put away your books. You've
+done enough lessons for to-night."
+
+Gratian gave himself a little shake of impatience.
+
+"How tiresome," he said. "I am quite awake now. I want you to go on
+telling me about the winds, Jonas, and I want to do a lot more lessons.
+I can't go to bed yet," but even while the words were on his lips, he
+started and shivered. "Jonas, it can't be south wind. It's as cold as
+anything."
+
+For a sharp keen gust had suddenly come round the corner, rasping the
+child's unprotected face almost "like a knife" as people sometimes say,
+and Watch, who had been rubbing his nose against Gratian, gave a snort
+of disgust.
+
+"You see Watch feels it too," said the boy. But Jonas only turned a
+little and looked about him calmly.
+
+"I can't say as I felt it, Master Gratian," he said. "But there's no
+answering for the winds and their freaks here at the Four Winds Farm,
+and it's but natural you should know more about 'em than most. All the
+same, I take it as you're feeling cold and chilly-like means as bed is
+the best place. You're getting sleepy--to say nothing of the Missus
+calling to ye to go."
+
+And again the mother's voice was heard.
+
+"Gratian, Gratian, my boy. Don't you hear me?"
+
+He moved, but slowly. A little imp of opposition had taken up its abode
+in the boy. Perhaps he had been feeling too pleased with his own good
+resolutions and beginnings!
+
+"Too bad," he muttered to himself, "just when I was getting to
+understand my lessons better. Old Jonas is very stupid."
+
+Again the short, sharp cutting slap of cold air on his face, and in
+spite of himself the boy moved more quickly.
+
+"Good-night, Jonas," he said rather grumpily, though he would not let
+himself shiver for fear he should again be told it showed he was sleepy,
+"I'm going. I'm not at all tired, but I'm going all the same. Only how
+you can say it's south wind--!"
+
+"I don't say so now. I said it _was_ south--that soft feeling as if one
+could see the glow of the south in it. Like enough it's east by now;
+isn't this where all the winds meet? Well, I'm off too. Good-night,
+master."
+
+"And you'll tell me about all the colours another time, won't you,
+Jonas?" said Gratian in a mollified tone.
+
+"Or you'll tell me, maybe," said the old man. "Never fear--we'll have
+some good talks over it. Out on the moor some holiday, with nobody but
+the sheep and Watch to hear our fancies--that's the best time--isn't it?"
+
+And the old shepherd whistled to the dog and disappeared round the
+corner of the house.
+
+His mother met Gratian at the kitchen door.
+
+"I was coming out to look for you," she said. "Put away your books now.
+You'd do no more good at them to-night."
+
+"I wasn't sleepy, mother. I went to the door to wake myself up," he
+replied. But his tone was no longer fretful or cross.
+
+"Feeling you needed waking up was something very like being sleepy," she
+answered smiling. "And all the lessons you have to learn are not to be
+found in your books, Gratian."
+
+He did not at once understand, but he kept the words in his mind to
+think over.
+
+"Good-night, mother," and he lifted his soft round face for her kiss.
+
+"Good-night, my boy. Father has gone out to the stable to speak to one
+of the men. I'll say good-night to him for you. Pleasant dreams, and get
+up as early as you like if you want to work more."
+
+"Mother," said Gratian hesitatingly.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Is it a good thing to be born where the four winds meet?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I can't say," she replied. "It's not done you any harm so far. But
+don't begin getting your head full of fancies, my boy. Off with you to
+bed, and get to sleep as fast as you can. Pleasant dreams."
+
+"But, mother," said the child as he went upstairs, "dreams are fancies."
+
+"Yes, but they don't waste our time. There's no harm in dreaming when
+we're asleep--we can't be doing aught else then."
+
+"Oh," said Gratian, "it's dreaming in the day that wastes time then."
+
+He was turning the corner of the stair as he said so, speaking more to
+himself than to his mother. Just then a little waft of air came right in
+his face. It was not the sharp touch that had made him start at the
+door, nor was it the soft warm breath which old Jonas said was the south
+wind. Rather did it remind Gratian of the kindly breeze and the
+sea-green glimmerings on the moor. He stood still for an instant. Again
+it fluttered by him, and he heard the words, "Not always, Gratian; not
+always."
+
+"What was I saying?" he asked himself. "Ah yes--that it is dreaming in
+the day that is a waste of time! And now she says 'Not always.' You are
+very puzzling people whoever you are," he went on; "you whose voices I
+hear in the chimney, and who seem to know all I am thinking whether I
+say it or not."
+
+And as he lifted his little face towards the corner whence the sudden
+draught had come, there fell on his ears the sound of rippling
+laughter--the merriest and yet softest laughter he had ever heard, and
+in which several voices seemed to mingle. So near it seemed at first
+that he could have fancied it came from the old granary on the other
+side of the wooden partition shutting off the staircase, but again, in
+an instant, it seemed to dance and flicker itself away, till nothing
+remained but a faint ringing echo, which might well be no more than the
+slight rattle of the glass in the old casement window.
+
+Then all was silent, and the boy went on to his own room, and was soon
+covered up and fast asleep in his little white bed.
+
+There were no voices in the chimney that night, or if there were Gratian
+did not hear them. But he had a curious dream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A RAINBOW DANCE
+
+  "Purple and azure, white and green and golden,
+         *       *       *       *       *
+                        and they whirl
+  Over each other with a thousand motions."
+
+  _Prometheus Unbound._--SHELLEY
+
+
+He dreamt that he awoke, and found himself not in his comfortable bed in
+his own room, but in an equally comfortable but much more uncommon bed
+in a very different place. Out on the moor! He opened his eyes and
+stared about him in surprise; there were the stars, up overhead, all
+blinking and winking at him as if asking what business a little boy had
+out there among them all in the middle of the night. And when he did
+find out where he was, he felt still more surprised at being so warm and
+cozy. For he felt perfectly so, even though he had neither blankets nor
+sheets nor pillow, but instead of all these a complete nest of the
+softest moss all about him. He was lying on it, and it covered him over
+as perfectly as a bird is covered by its feathers.
+
+"Dear me," he said to himself, "this is very funny. How have I got here,
+and who has covered me up like this?"
+
+But still he did not feel so excessively surprised as if he had been
+awake; for in dreams, as everybody knows, any surprise one feels quickly
+disappears, and one is generally very ready to take things as they come.
+So he lay still, just quietly gazing about him. And gradually a murmur
+of approaching sound caught his ears. It was like soft voices and
+fluttering garments and breezes among trees, all mixed together, till as
+it came nearer the voices detached themselves from the other sounds, and
+he heard what they were saying.
+
+"Yes, he deserves a treat, poor child," said one in very gentle
+caressing tones; "you have teased him enough, sisters."
+
+"Teased him!" exclaimed another voice, and this time it seemed a
+familiar one to him; "_I_ tease him! Why, as you well know, it is my
+mission in life to comfort and console. I don't believe in petting and
+praising to the same extent as you do, perhaps--still you cannot say I
+ever tease. Laugh at him a little now and then, I may. But that does no
+harm."
+
+"I never pet and praise except when it is deserved," murmured the first
+voice--and as he heard its soft tones a sort of delicious languor seemed
+to creep over Gratian--"never. But I beg your pardon, sister, if I
+misjudged you. You can be rigorous sometimes, you know, and----"
+
+"So much the better--so much the better," broke in with clear cutting
+distinctness another voice; "how would the world go round--that is to
+say, how would the ships sail and the windmills turn--if we were all
+four as sweet and silky as you, my golden-winged sister? But it was _I_
+who teased the child as you call it--I slapped him on the face; yes, and
+I am ready to do it again--to sting him sharply, when I think he needs
+it."
+
+"Right, right--quite right," said another voice, not exactly sharp and
+clear like the last, yet with a resemblance to it, though deeper and
+sterner and with a strange cold strength in its accents. "You are his
+true friend in doing so. I for my part shall always be ready to
+invigorate and support him--to brace him for the battles he must fight.
+But you, sister, have a rare gift of correction and of discerning the
+weak points which may lead to defeat and failure. Yours is an ungrateful
+task truly, but you are a valuable monitor."
+
+"I must find my satisfaction in such considerations; it is plain I shall
+never get any elsewhere," replied the former speaker, rather bitterly.
+"What horrid things are said of me, to be sure! Every ache and pain is
+laid at my door--I am 'neither good for man nor beast,' I am told! and
+yet--I am not all grim and gray, am I, sisters? There is a rosy glow in
+the trail of my garments if people were not so short-sighted and
+colour-blind."
+
+"True, indeed, as who knows better than I," said the sweet mellow tones
+of the first speaker. "When you come my way and we dance together,
+sister, who could be less grim than you?"
+
+"Ah, indeed," said the cold, stern voice, but it sounded less stern now,
+"then her sharp and biting words came from neighbourhood with _me_. Ah
+well--I can bear the reproach."
+
+"I should think so," said the voice which Gratian had recognised, "for
+you know in your heart, you great icy creature, that you love fun as
+well as any one. How you do whirl and leap and rush and tear about,
+once your spirits really get the better of you! And you have such pretty
+playthings--your snow-flakes and filigree and icicles--none of us can
+boast such treasures, not to speak of your icebergs and crystal palaces,
+where you hide heaven knows what. My poor waves and foam, though I allow
+they are pretty in their way, are nothing to your possessions."
+
+[Illustration: "Now for our dance--our rainbow dance, sisters--no need
+to wake him roughly. We need only kiss his eyelids."]
+
+"Never mind all that. _I_ don't grumble, though I might. What can one do
+with millions of tons of sand for a toy, I should like to know? And
+little else comes in my way that I can play catch-and-toss with! I can
+waft my scents about, to be sure--there is some pleasure in that. But
+now for our dance--our rainbow dance, sisters--no need to wake him
+roughly. We need only kiss his eyelids."
+
+And Gratian, who had not all this time, strange to say, known that his
+eyes were closed again, felt across his lids a breeze so fresh and
+sudden that he naturally unclosed them to see whence it came. And once
+open he did not feel inclined to shut them again, I can assure you.
+
+The sight before him was so pretty--and not the sight only. For the
+voices had melted into music--far off at first, then by slow degrees
+coming nearer; rising, falling, swelling, sinking, bright with
+rejoicing like the song of the lark, then soft and low as the tones of
+a mother hushing her baby to sleep, again wildly triumphant like a
+battle strain of victory, and even while you listened changing into the
+mournful, solemn cadence of a dirge, till at last all mingled into a
+slow, even measure of stately harmony, and the colours which had been
+weaving themselves in the distance, like a plaited rainbow before the
+boy's eyes, took definite form as they drew near him.
+
+He saw them then--the four invisible sisters; he saw them, and yet it is
+hard to tell what he saw! They were distinct and yet vague, separate and
+yet together. But by degrees he distinguished them better. There was his
+old friend with the floating sea-green-and-blue mantle, and the
+streaming fair hair and loving sad eyes, and next her the sister with
+the golden wings and glowing locks and laughing rosy face, and then a
+gray shrouded nimble figure, which seemed everywhere at once, whose
+features Gratian could scarcely see, though a pair of bright sparkling
+eyes flashed out now and then, while sometimes a gleam of radiant red
+lighted up the grim robe. And in and out in the meshes of the dance
+glided the white form of the genius of the north--cold and stately,
+sparkling as she moved, though shaded now and then by the steel-blue
+veil which covered the dusky head. But as the dance went on, the music
+gradually grew faster and the soft regular movements changed into a
+quicker measure. In and out the four figures wove and unwove themselves
+together, and the more quickly they moved the more varied and brilliant
+grew the colours which seemed a part of them, so that each seemed to
+have all those of the others as well as her own, and Gratian understood
+why they had spoken of the rainbow dance. Golden-wings glowed with every
+other shade reflected on her own rich background, the sister from the
+sea grew warmer with the red and yellow that shone out among the lapping
+folds of her mantle, with its feather-like trimming of foam, the gray of
+the East-wind's garments grew ruddier, like the sky before sunrise, and
+the cold white of the icy North glimmered and gleamed like an opal. And
+faster and faster they danced and glided and whirled about, till Gratian
+felt as if his breath were going, and that in another moment he would be
+carried away himself by the rush.
+
+"Stop, stop," he cried at last. "It is beautiful, it is lovely, but my
+breath is going. Stop."
+
+Instantly the four heads turned towards him, the four pairs of wings
+sheathed themselves, the eyes, laughing and gentle, piercing and grave,
+seemed all to be gazing at him at once, and eight outstretched arms
+seemed as if about to lift him upwards.
+
+"No--no--" he said, "I don't want--I don't----."
+
+But with the struggle to speak he awoke. He was in his own bed of
+course, and by the light he saw that it must be nearly time to get up.
+
+He stretched himself sleepily, smiling as he did so.
+
+"What nice dreams I have had," he said to himself. "I wonder if they
+come of working well at my lessons? _They_ said it was to be a treat for
+me. I wish I could go to sleep and dream it all over again."
+
+But just then he heard his mother's voice calling up the stair to him.
+
+"Are you up, Gratian? You will be late if you are not quick."
+
+Gratian gave himself a little shake of impatience under the bedclothes;
+he glanced at the window--the sky was gray and overcast, with every sign
+of a rainy day about it. He tucked himself up again, even though he knew
+it was very foolish thus to delay the evil moment.
+
+"It's too bad," he thought. "I can _never_ do what I want. Last night I
+had to go to bed when I wanted to sit up, and now I have to get up when
+I do so want to stay in bed."
+
+But just at that moment a strange thing happened. The little casement
+window burst open with a bang, and a blast of cold sharp wind dashed
+into the room, upsetting a chair, scattering Gratian's clothes, neatly
+laid together in a little heap, and flinging itself on the bed with a
+whirl, so that the coverlet took to playing antics in its turn, and the
+blankets no doubt would have followed its example had Gratian not
+clutched at them. But all his comfort was destroyed--no possibility of
+feeling warm and snug with the window open and all this uproar going on.
+Gratian sprang up in a rage, and ran to the window. He shut it again
+easily enough.
+
+"I can't think what made it fly open," he said to himself; "there was no
+wind in the night, and it never burst open before."
+
+He stood shivering and undecided. Now that the window was shut, bed
+looked very comfortable again.
+
+"I'll just get in for five minutes," he said to himself; "I'm so
+shivering cold with that wind, I shan't get warm all day."
+
+He turned to the bed, but just as one little foot was raised to get in,
+lo and behold, a rattle and bang, and again the window burst open!
+Gratian flew back, it shut obediently as before. But he was now
+thoroughly awakened and alert. There was no good going back to bed if he
+was to be blown out of it in this fashion, and Gratian set to to dress
+himself, though in a rather surly mood, and keeping an eye on the
+rebellious window the while. But the window behaved quite well--it
+showed no signs of bursting open, it did not even rattle! and Gratian
+was ready in good time after all.
+
+"You look cold, my boy," said his mother, when he was seated at table
+and eating his breakfast.
+
+"The wind blew my window open twice, and it made my room very cold," he
+replied rather dolefully.
+
+"Blew your window open? That's strange," said his father. "The wind's
+not in the east this morning, and it's only an east wind that could
+burst in your window. You can't have shut it properly."
+
+"Yes, father, I did--the first time I shut it just as well as the
+second, and it didn't blow open after the second time. But I _know_ I
+shut it well both times. I think it must be in the east, for it felt so
+sharp when it blew in."
+
+"It must have changed quickly then," said the farmer, eyeing the sky
+through the large old-fashioned kitchen window in front of him. "That's
+the queer thing hereabouts; many a day if I was put to it to answer, I
+couldn't say which way the wind was blowing."
+
+"Or which way it _wasn't_ blowing, would be more like it," said Mrs.
+Conyfer with a smile. "It's to be hoped it'll blow you the right way to
+school anyway, Gratian. You don't look sure of it this morning!"
+
+"I'm cold, mother, and I've always got to do what I don't want. Last
+night I didn't want to go to bed, and this morning I didn't want to get
+up, and now I don't want to go to school, and I must."
+
+He got up slowly and unwillingly and began putting his books together.
+His mother looked at him with a slight smile on her face.
+
+"'Must''s a grand word, Gratian," she said. "I don't know what we'd be
+without it. You'll feel all right once you're scampering across the
+moor."
+
+"Maybe," he replied. But his tone was rather plaintive still. He was
+feeling "sorry for himself" this morning.
+
+Things in general, however, did seem brighter, as his mother had
+prophesied they would, when he found himself outside. It was really not
+cold after all; it was one of those breezy yet not chilly mornings when,
+though there is nothing depressing in the air, there is a curious
+feeling of mystery--as if nature were holding secret discussions, which
+the winds and the waves, the hills and the clouds, the trees and the
+birds even, know all about, but which we--clumsy creatures that we
+are--are as yet shut out from.
+
+"What is it all about, I wonder?" said Gratian to himself, as he became
+conscious of this feeling--an _autumn_ feeling it always is, I think.
+"Everything seems so grave. Are they planning about the winter coming,
+and how the flowers and all the tender little plants are to be taken
+care of till it is over? Or is there going to be a great storm up in the
+sky? perhaps they are trying to settle it without a battle, but it does
+look very gloomy up there."
+
+For the grayness had the threatening steel-blue shade over it which
+betokens disturbance of some kind. Still the child's spirits rose as he
+ran; there was something reviving in the little gusts of moorland breeze
+that met him every now and then, and he forgot everything else in the
+pleasure of the quick movement and the glow that soon replaced the
+chilly feelings with which he had set out.
+
+He had run a good way, when something white, or light-coloured,
+fluttering on the ground some little way before him, caught his eye. And
+as he drew nearer he saw that it was a book, or papers of some kind,
+hooked on to a low-growing furze bush. Suddenly the words of the
+mysterious figure of the night before returned to his mind--"Look for
+the furze bush on the right of the path where it turns for the last
+time," she had said.
+
+Gratian stopped short. Yes--there in front of him was the landmark--the
+path turned here for the last time, as she had said. He looked about him
+in astonishment.
+
+"This was where my books were last night, then," he said to himself. "I
+had no idea I had come so far! Why, I was home in half a second--it is
+very strange--I could fancy it was a dream, or else that last night and
+the rainbow dance _wasn't_ a dream."
+
+He ran on to where the white thing was still fluttering appealingly, as
+if begging him to detach it. Poor white thing! It was or had been an
+exercise-book. At first Gratian fancied it must be one of his
+copy-books, left behind by mistake after his fairy friend had given him
+back the rest of his books. But as soon as he took it in his hands and
+saw the neat, clear characters, he knew it was not his, and he did not
+need to look at the signature, "Anthony Ferris," to guess that it
+belonged to the miller's son--for Tony was a clever boy, almost at the
+head of the school, and famed for his very good writing.
+
+"Ah ha," thought Gratian triumphantly, "I have you now, Master Tony."
+
+He had recognised the book as containing Tony's dictation lessons, for
+here and there were the wrongly spelt words--not many of them, for Tony
+was a good speller too--marked by the schoolmaster.
+
+"Tony must have meant to take the book home to copy it out clear, and
+correct the wrong spelling," thought Gratian. And he remembered hearing
+the teacher telling Tony's class that on the neatness with which this
+was done would depend several important good marks. "He'll not be head
+of his class, now he's lost this book. Serve him right for the trick he
+played me," said Gratian to himself, as he rolled up the tattered book
+and slipped it into his satchel. "It's not so badly torn but what he
+could have copied it out all right, but it would have been torn to
+pieces by this evening, now that the wind's getting up. So it isn't my
+fault but his own--nasty spiteful fellow. Where would all _my_ poor
+books have been by now, thanks to him?"
+
+The wind was getting up indeed--and a cold biting wind too. For just as
+Gratian was thus thinking, there came down such a gust as he had but
+seldom felt the force of. For an instant he staggered and all but fell,
+so unprepared had he been for the sudden buffet. It took all his
+strength and agility to keep his feet during the short remainder of the
+moorland path, so sharp and violent were the blasts. And it was with
+face and hands tingling and smarting painfully that he entered the
+schoolroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+GOOD FOR EVIL
+
+                "For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter
+  Of the Eternal's language;--on earth it is called forgiveness!"
+
+  _The Children of the Lord's Supper._--LONGFELLOW
+
+
+Tony's face was almost the first thing he caught sight of. It was not
+late, but several children were already there, and Tony, contrary to his
+custom, instead of playing outside till the very last moment, was in the
+schoolroom eagerly searching for something among the slates and books
+belonging to his class. Gratian understood the reason, and smiled to
+himself inwardly--but had he smiled visibly I don't think his face would
+have been improved by it. Nor was there real pleasure or rejoicing in
+the feeling of triumph which for a moment made him forget his smarting
+face and hands.
+
+"How red you look, Gratian," said Dolly, Tony's sister, "have you been
+crying?"
+
+"Crying--no, nonsense, Dolly," he replied in a tone such as gentle
+Gratian seldom used. "Whose face wouldn't be red with such a horrible
+wind cutting one to pieces."
+
+"Wind!" repeated Dolly, "I didn't feel any wind. It must have got up all
+of a sudden. Did you get home quickly last night?"
+
+Gratian looked at her. For half an instant he wondered if there was any
+meaning in her question--had Dolly anything to do with the trick that
+had been played him? But his glance at her kindly, honest face reassured
+him. He was going to answer when Tony interrupted him.
+
+"Got home quick," he said, looking up with a grin; "of course he did. He
+was in such a hurry to get to work. Didn't you see what a lot of books
+he took home with him? My! your shoulders must have ached before you got
+to the Farm, Gratian. Mine did, I know, though 'twas only a short bit I
+carried your satchel."
+
+"It was pretty heavy," said Gratian, unfastening it as he spoke, and
+coolly taking out the books one after another, watching Tony the while,
+"but nothing to hurt. And I got all my lessons done nicely. It was kind
+of you, Tony, to help me to carry my satchel."
+
+Tony stared--with eyes and mouth wide open.
+
+"What's the matter?" said his sister. "You look as if you'd seen a
+ghost, Tony."
+
+The boy turned away, muttering to himself.
+
+"Tony's put out this morning," said Dolly in a low voice to Gratian,
+"and I can't help being sorry too. He's lost his exercise-book that he
+was to copy out clear--and the master said it'd have to do with getting
+the prize. Tony's in a great taking."
+
+"How did he lose it?" asked Gratian with a rather queer feeling, as he
+wondered what Dolly would say if she knew that at that very moment the
+lost book was safely hidden away at the bottom of his satchel, which he
+took care not to leave within Tony's reach.
+
+"He doesn't know," said Dolly dolefully. "He's sure he had it when we
+left school last night. We were looking for it all evening, and then he
+thought maybe it'd be here after all. But it isn't."
+
+Then the bell rang for lessons to begin, and Gratian saw no more of
+Tony, who was at the other side of the schoolroom in a higher class, and
+though Dolly was in the same as himself, she was some places off, so
+that there was no chance of any talking or whispering.
+
+Gratian's lessons were well learnt and understood. It was not long
+before he found himself higher in his class than he had almost ever done
+before, and he caught the master's eye looking at him with approval, and
+a smile of encouragement on his face. Why was it he could not meet it
+with a brightly answering smile as he would have done the day before?
+Why did he turn away, his cheeks tingling again as if the wind had been
+slapping them, here inside the sheltered schoolroom?
+
+The master felt a little disappointed.
+
+"He will never do really well if he is so foolishly shy and bashful," he
+said to himself, when Gratian turned away as if ashamed to be grateful
+for the few kind words the teacher said to him at the end of the
+morning's lessons; and the boy, in a corner of the playground by himself
+when the other children had run home for their dinner, felt nearly, if
+not quite, as unhappy as the day before.
+
+"I don't see why I should mind about Tony," he was thinking as he sat
+there. "He's a naughty, unkind boy, and he deserves to be punished. If
+it hadn't been for _her_ helping me, I wouldn't have known my lessons a
+bit this morning, and the master would have thought I was never going to
+try. I just hope Tony will lose his place and the prize and everything.
+Oh, how cold it is!" for round the wall, _through_ it indeed, it almost
+seemed, came sneaking a sharp little gust of air, so cold, so cutting,
+that Gratian actually shivered and shook, and the smarting in his face
+began again. "I feel cold even in my bones," he said to himself.
+
+Just then voices reached his ear. The door of the schoolhouse opened and
+the master appeared, showing out a lady, who had evidently come to speak
+to him about something. She was a very pleasant-looking lady, and
+Gratian's eyes rested with satisfaction on her pretty dress and graceful
+figure.
+
+"Then you will not forget about it? You will let me know in a few days
+what you think?" Gratian heard her say.
+
+"Certainly, madam," replied the schoolmaster. "I have already one or two
+in my mind who, I think, may be suitable. But I should like to think it
+over and to ask the parents' consent."
+
+"Of course--of course. Good-bye then for the present, and thank you,"
+said the lady, and then she went out at the little garden-gate and the
+schoolmaster returned into his house.
+
+"I wonder what they were talking about," thought Gratian. But he soon
+forgot about it again--his mind was too full of its own affairs.
+
+Tony looked vexed and unhappy that afternoon, and Dolly's rosy face bore
+traces of tears. She overtook Gratian on his way home in the evening,
+and began again talking about the lost book.
+
+"It's so vexing for Tony, isn't it?" she said, "and do you know,
+Gratian, it's even more vexing than we thought. Did you see a lady at
+the school to-day? Do you know who she was?"
+
+Gratian shook his head.
+
+"She's the lady from the Big House down the road, that's been shut up so
+long. It isn't her house, but she's the sister or the cousin of the
+gentleman it belongs to, and he's lent it to her because the doctors
+said the air hereabouts would be good for her little boy. He's ill
+someway, he can scarcely walk. And she came to the school to-day to ask
+master if one of the boys--his best boy, she said--might go sometimes to
+play with her little boy and read to him a little. And Tony was sure of
+being the top of the class if only he had finished copying out those
+exercises--he'd put right all the faults the master had marked, and it
+only wanted copying. But now he's no chance; the other boys have theirs
+nearly done."
+
+"How do you know about what the lady said?" Gratian asked.
+
+"The master told mother. He met her in the village just before afternoon
+lessons, and asked her if she'd let Tony go, if so be as he was head of
+his class."
+
+"And would he like to go, d'ye think, Dolly?" asked Gratian.
+
+"He'd like to be head of his class, anyway," the sister replied. "I
+don't know as father can let him go, for we're very busy at the mill,
+and Tony's big enough to help when he's not at school. But he'd not like
+to see Ben or that conceited Robert put before him. If it were you now,
+Gratian, I don't think he'd mind so much."
+
+Gratian's heart beat fast at her words. Visions of the pleasure of going
+to see the pretty lady and her boy, of hearing her soft voice speaking
+to him, and of seeing the inside of the Big House, which had always been
+a subject of curiosity to the children of the village, rose temptingly
+before him. But they soon faded.
+
+"Me!" he exclaimed, "I'd have no chance--even failing Tony."
+
+"I don't know," said Dolly. "You're never a naughty boy, and you can
+read very nice when you like. Master always seems to think you read next
+best to Tony. I shouldn't wonder if he sent you, if he's vexed with
+Tony. And he will be that, for he told him to do out that writing so
+very neatly. I think it was to be shown to the gentlemen that come to
+see the school sometimes. But I musn't go any farther with you, Gratian.
+It'll be dark before I get home. I'm afraid Tony must have dropped the
+book out here, and that it blew away. Good-night, Gratian."
+
+"Good-night, Dolly," he replied. And then after a little hesitation he
+added, "I wish--I wish Tony hadn't lost his book."
+
+"Thank you, Gratian," said the little girl as she ran off.
+
+Gratian stood and looked after her with a queer mixture of feelings. It
+was true, as he had said to Dolly, he did wish Tony had not lost his
+book, but almost more he wished _he_ had not found it. But just now,
+standing there in the softly fading light, with the evening breeze--no
+longer the sharp blast of the morning--gently fanning his cheeks,
+looking after little Dolly as she ran home, and thinking of Tony's
+sunburnt troubled face, the angry feelings seemed to grow fainter, till
+the wish to see his schoolfellow punished for his mischievous trick died
+away altogether. And once he had got to this, it was a quick step to
+still better things.
+
+"I _will_, I _will_," he shouted out aloud, though there was no
+one--_was_ there no one?--to hear. And as he sprang forward to rush
+after Dolly and overtake her, it seemed to him that he was half-lifted
+from his feet, and at the same moment another waft of the breeze he had
+been feeling, though still softer and with a scent as of spring flowers
+about it, blew into his face.
+
+"Are you kissing me, kind wind?" he said laughing, and in answer, as it
+were, he felt himself blown along almost as swiftly as the night before.
+At this rate it did not take him long to gain ground on the miller's
+daughter.
+
+"Dolly, Dolly," he called out when he saw himself within a few paces of
+her. "Stop, do stop. I have something for you--something to say to you."
+
+Dolly turned round in astonishment.
+
+"Gratian!" she exclaimed, "have you been running after me all this time?
+I would have waited for you if I'd known."
+
+[Illustration: "Look here, Dolly," and he held out to her the poor
+copy-book which he had already taken out of his satchel.]
+
+"Never mind. I ran very fast," said Gratian. "Look here, Dolly," and he
+held out to her the poor copy-book which he had already taken out of his
+satchel. "This is what I ran after you for; give it to Tony, and----"
+
+"Tony's lost exercise-book!" cried Dolly. "Oh Gratian, how glad he will
+be. Where did you find it? _How_ good of you! Did you find it just now,
+since you said good-night to me?"
+
+Gratian's face grew red, but it was too dark for Dolly to see.
+
+"No," he said, "I found it before. But--but--Tony had done me a bad
+turn, Dolly, and it wasn't easy--not all at once--to do him a good one
+instead. But I've done it now, and you may tell him what I say. I'm
+quite in earnest, and I'm glad I've done it. Tell him I hope he'll be
+the head of his class now, anyway, and----"
+
+"Gratian," said Dolly, catching hold of his arm as she spoke, "I don't
+know what the trick was that Tony played you, or tried to play you. But
+I know he's terrible fond of tricks, though I don't think he's got a bad
+heart. And it was too bad of him to play it on you, it was--you that
+never does ill turns to none of us."
+
+"I've been near it this time, though," said Gratian, feeling, now that
+the temptation was over, the comfort of confessing the worst. "I was
+very mad with Tony, and I didn't like bringing myself to give back his
+book. I don't want you to think me better than I am, Dolly."
+
+"But I do think you very good all the same, I do," said the little girl
+earnestly, "and I'll tell Tony so. And you shan't have any more tricks
+played you by him--he's not so bad as that. Thank you very much,
+Gratian. If he gets the prize, it'll be all through you."
+
+"And about going to the Big House," added Gratian, rather sadly. "He'll
+be the one for that now. I think that's far before getting a prize. It
+was thinking of that made me feel I _must_ give him his book. I'd give a
+good deal, I know, to be the one to go the Big House."
+
+"Would you?" said Dolly, a little surprised, for it was not very often
+Gratian spoke so eagerly about anything. "I don't know that I'd care so
+much about it. And to be sure you might have been the one if you hadn't
+helped Tony now! But I don't know that it would be much fun after
+all--just amusing a little boy that's ill."
+
+"You didn't see the lady, Dolly, but _I_ did," said Gratian. "She's not
+like any one I ever saw before--she's so beautiful. Her hair's a little
+the colour of yours, I think, but her skin's like--like cream, and her
+eyes are as kind as forget-me-nots."
+
+"Was she finely dressed?" asked Dolly, becoming interested.
+
+"Yes--at least I think so. Her dress was very soft, and a nice sort of
+shiny way when she moved, and she spoke so prettily. And oh, Dolly, it'd
+be terribly nice to see the Big House. Fancy, I've heard tell there are
+beautiful pictures there."
+
+"Pictures--big ones in gold frames, do you mean?" Dolly inquired.
+
+"I don't know about gold frames. I've never seen any. But pictures of
+all sorts of things--of places far away, I daresay, where the sky is so
+blue and the big sea--like what the master tells us sometimes in our
+geography. Oh, I'd like more than anything to see pictures, Dolly."
+
+"I never thought about such things. What a funny boy you are, Gratian,"
+said Dolly, as she ran off joyfully, with Tony's tattered book in her
+hand.
+
+It did not take Gratian long to make his way home--the feeling of having
+done right "adds feather to the heel." But as he sped along the
+moorland path he could not help wondering to himself if his soft-voiced
+friend of the night before were anywhere near.
+
+"I think she must be pleased with me," he thought. "It feels like her
+kissing me," as just then the evening breeze again met him as he ran.
+"Is it you Golden-wings, or you, Spirit of the Waves?" he said, for he
+had learnt in his dream to think of them thus. And a little soft
+laughter in the air about him told him he was not far wrong. "Perhaps it
+is both together," he thought. "I think they are pleased. It is nicer
+than when that sharp East-wind comes snapping at one--though after all,
+East-wind, I think perhaps I should thank you for having stung me as you
+did this morning--I rather think I deserved it."
+
+Whiz, rush, dash--came a sharp blast as he spoke. Gratian started, and
+for half a moment felt almost angry.
+
+"I didn't deserve it just now, though," he said. But a ripple of
+laughter above him made his vexation fade away.
+
+"You silly boy," came a whisper close to his ear. "Can't you take a
+joke?"
+
+"Yes, that I can, as well as any one;" and no sooner were the words out
+of his mouth than again, with the whir and the swoop now becoming
+familiar to him, he was once more raised from the ground, and really,
+before he knew where he was, he found himself at the gate of the
+farm-house.
+
+His mother was just coming out to the door.
+
+"Dear me, child," she said, "how suddenly you have come! I have been out
+several times to the gate to look for you, but though it is not yet dark
+I didn't see you."
+
+"I did come very quickly, mother dear," said Gratian, and for a moment
+he thought of telling her about his strange new friends. But somehow,
+when he was on the point of doing so, the words would not come, and his
+feelings grew misty and confused as when one tries to recollect a dream
+that one knows was in one's memory but a moment before. And he felt that
+the voices of the winds were as little to be told as are the songs of
+the birds to those who have not heard them for themselves. So he just
+looked up in his mother's face with a smile, and she stooped and kissed
+him--which she did not very often do. For the moorland people are not
+soft and caressing in their ways, but rather sharp and rugged, though
+their hearts are true.
+
+"I wonder where you come from, sometimes, Gratian," said his mother
+half-laughing. "You don't seem like the other children about."
+
+"But mother, I'm getting over dreaming at my lessons. I am indeed," said
+the child brightly. "I think when you ask the master about me the next
+time, he'll tell you he's pleased with me."
+
+"That's my good boy," said she well pleased.
+
+So the day ended well for the child of the Four Winds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ORGAN TONES
+
+  "Music, when soft voices die,
+    Vibrates in the memory."
+
+  SHELLEY
+
+
+As Gratian was running into school the next morning he felt some one
+tugging at his coat, and looking round, there was Tony, his round face
+redder than usual, his eyes bright and yet shy.
+
+"She give it me, Gratian--Doll did--and--and--I've to thank you. I was
+awful glad--I was that."
+
+"Have you got it done? Will it be all right for the prize and all that?"
+asked Gratian.
+
+Tony nodded.
+
+"I think so. I sat up late last night writing, and I think I'll get it
+done to-night. It was awful good of you, Gratian," Tony went on, growing
+more at his ease, "for I won't go for to say that it wasn't a mean trick
+about the stones. But I meant to go back and get the books and keep
+them safe for you till the next morning. You did look so funny tramping
+along with the bag of stones," and Tony's face screwed itself up as if
+he wanted to laugh but dared not.
+
+"It didn't _feel_ funny," said Gratian. "It felt very horrid. Indeed it
+makes me get cross to think of it even now--don't say any more about it,
+Tony."
+
+For it did seem to him as if, after all, the miller's boy was getting
+off rather easily! And it felt a little hard that all the good things
+should be falling to Tony's share, when he had been so unkind to
+another.
+
+"I want to forget it," he went on; "if the master knew about it, he'd
+not let you off without a good scolding. But I'm not going to stand here
+shivering--I tell you I don't want to say any more about it, Tony."
+
+"Shivering," repeated Tony, "why it's a wonderful mild morning for
+November. Father was just saying so"--and to tell the truth Gratian
+himself had thought it so as he ran across the moor. "But, Gratian, you
+needn't be so mad with me now--I know it was a mean trick, and just to
+show you that I know it, I promise you the master _shall_ know all about
+it," and Tony held his head higher as he said the words. "There's only
+one thing, Gratian. I do wish you'd tell me where you found my book, and
+how you knew where I'd hidden yours? I've been thinking and thinking
+about it, and I can't make it out. Folks do say as there's still queer
+customers to be met on the moor after nightfall. I wonder if you got the
+fairies to help you, Gratian?" added Tony laughing.
+
+Gratian laughed too.
+
+"No, Tony, it wasn't the fairies," he said, his good-humour returning.
+And it was quite restored by a sweet soft whisper at that moment
+breathed into his ear--"no, not the fairies--but who it was is our
+secret--eh, Gratian?" And Gratian laughed again softly in return.
+
+"Who was it then?" persisted Tony. But just then the school-bell rang,
+and there was no time for more talking.
+
+Tony was kept very busy for the next day or two with his writing-out,
+which took him longer than he expected. Gratian too was working hard to
+make up for lost time, but he felt happy. He saw that the master was
+pleased, and that his companions were beginning to look up to him as
+they had never done before. But he missed his new friends. The weather
+was very still--for some days he had heard scarcely a rustle among the
+trees and bushes, and though he had lain awake at night, no murmuring
+voices in the chimney had reached his ears.
+
+"Have they gone away already? Was it all a dream?" the child asked
+himself sadly.
+
+Sunday came round again, and Gratian set off to church with his father
+and mother. Going to church was one of his pleasures--of late
+especially, for the owner of the Big House, though seldom there himself,
+was generous and rich, and he had spent money in restoring the church
+and giving a beautiful organ. And on Sunday mornings an organist came
+from a distance to play on it, but in the afternoon its great voice was
+silent, for no one in the village--not even the schoolmaster, who was
+supposed to know most things--knew how to play on it. For this reason
+Gratian never cared to go to church the second time--he would much
+rather have stayed out on the moor with Jonas and Watch, and sometimes,
+in the fine summer weather, when the walk was hot and tiring even for
+big people, his mother had allowed him to do so. But now, with winter at
+hand, it was not fit for sauntering about or lying on the heather,
+especially with Sunday clothes on, so the child knew it was no use
+asking to stay at home.
+
+This Sunday afternoon brought a very welcome surprise. Scarcely was the
+boy settled in his corner beside his mother, before the rich deep tones
+fell on his ear. He started and looked about him, not sure if his fancy
+were not playing him false. But no--clearer and stronger grew the
+music--there was no mistake, and Gratian gave himself up to the pleasure
+of listening. And never had it been to him more beautiful. New fancies
+mingled with his enjoyment of it, for it seemed to him that he could
+distinguish in it the voices of his friends--the loving, plaintive
+breath of the west, telling of the lapping of the waves on some lonely
+shore; the sterner, deeper tones of the strong spirit of the north; even
+the sharply thrilling blast of the ever-restless east wind seemed to
+flash here and there like lightning darts, cutting through and yet
+melting again into the harmony. And then from time to time the sweet,
+rich glowing song of praise from the lips of Golden-wings, the joyful.
+
+"Yes, they are all there," said Gratian to himself in an ecstasy of
+completest pleasure. "I hear them all. That is perhaps why they have not
+come to me lately--it was to be a surprise! But I have found you out,
+you see. Ah, if I could play on the organ you could never hide
+yourselves from me for long, my friends. Perhaps the organ is one of
+their real homes. I wonder if it can be."
+
+And his face looked so bright and yet absorbed that his mother could not
+help smiling at him, as they sat waiting for a moment after the last
+notes had died away.
+
+"Are you so pleased to have music in the afternoon too?" she said. "It
+is thanks to the stranger lady--the squire's cousin, who has come to the
+Big House. There--you can see her. She is just closing the organ."
+
+Gratian stood up on his tiptoes and bent forward as far as he could. He
+caught but one glimpse of the fair face, but it was enough. It was the
+same--the lady with the forget-me-not eyes; and his own eyes beamed with
+fresh delight.
+
+"They must be friends of hers too," was the first thought that darted
+through his brain; "she must know them, else she couldn't make their
+voices come like that. Oh dear, if I could but go to the Big House,
+perhaps she would tell me about how she knows them."
+
+But even to think of the possibility was very nice. Gratian mused on it,
+turning it over and over in his mind, as was his wont, all the way home.
+And that evening, while he sat in his corner reading over the verses
+which the master always liked his scholars to say on the Monday
+morning--his father and mother with their big Sunday books open on the
+table before them as usual--a strange feeling came over him that he was
+again in the church, again listening to the organ; and so absorbing grew
+the feeling that, fearful of its vanishing, he closed his eyes and
+leaned his curly head on the wooden rail of the old chair and listened.
+Yes, clearer and fuller grew the tones--he was curled up in a corner of
+the chancel by this time, in his dream--and gradually in front, as it
+were, of the background of sound, grew out the voices he had learnt to
+know so well. They all seemed to be singing together at first, but by
+degrees the singing turned into soft speaking, the sound of the organ
+had faded into silence, and opening his eyes, by a faint ray of
+moonlight creeping in through the window, he saw he was in his own bed
+in his own room.
+
+How had he come there? Had his mother carried him up and undressed him
+without awaking him as she had sometimes done when he was a very tiny
+boy?
+
+"No--she couldn't. I'm too big and heavy," he thought sleepily. "But
+hush! the voices again."
+
+"Yes, I carried him up. He was so sleepy--he never knew--nobody knew.
+The mother looked round and thought he had gone off himself. And
+Golden-wings undressed him. He will notice the scent on his little shirt
+when he puts it on in the morning."
+
+"Humph!" replied a second voice, in a rather surly tone, "you are
+spoiling the child, you and our sister of the south. Snow-wings and I
+must take him in hand a while--a whi--ile."
+
+For the East-wind was evidently in a hurry. Her voice grew fainter as if
+she were flying away.
+
+"Stop a moment," said the softest voice of all. "It's not fair of you to
+say we are spoiling the child--Sea-breezes and I--we're doing nothing of
+the kind. We never pet or comfort him save when he deserves it--we keep
+strictly to our compact. You and our icy sister have been free to
+interfere when you thought right. Do you hear, Gray-wings! do you
+he--ar?"
+
+And far off, from the very top of the chimney, came Gray-wings's reply.
+
+"All right--all right, but I haven't time to wait.
+Good-night--go--od-ni--ght," and for once East-wind's voice sounded soft
+and musical.
+
+Then the two gentle sisters went on murmuring together, and what they
+said was very pleasant to Gratian to hear.
+
+"_I_ say," said Golden-wings--"_I_ say he has been a very good boy. He
+is doing credit to his training, little though he suspects how long he
+has been under our charge."
+
+"He is awaking to that and to other things now," replied she whom the
+others called the Spirit of the Sea. "It is sad to think that some day
+our guardianship must come to an end."
+
+"Well, don't think of it, then. _I_ never think of disagreeable things,"
+replied the bright voice.
+
+"But how can one help it? Think how tiny he was--the queer little
+red-faced solemn-eyed baby, when we first sang our lullabies to him, and
+how we looked forward to the time when he should hear more in our voices
+than any one but a godchild of ours _can_ hear. And now----"
+
+"Now that time has come, and we must take care what we say--he may be
+awake at this very moment. But listen, sister--I think we must do
+something--you and I. Our sterner sisters are all very well in their
+places, but all work and no play is not _my_ idea of education. Now
+listen to my plan;" but here the murmuring grew so soft and vague that
+Gratian could no longer distinguish the syllables. He tried to strain
+his ears, but it was useless, and he grew sleepy through the trying to
+keep awake. The last sound he was conscious of was a flapping of wings
+and a murmured "Good-night, Gratian. Good-night, little
+godson--good-ni--ight," and then he fell asleep and slept till morning.
+
+He would have forgotten it all perhaps, or remembered it only with the
+indistinctness of a dream that is past, had it not been for something
+unusual in the look of the little heap of clothes which lay on the chair
+beside his bed. They were so _very_ neatly folded--though Gratian
+prided himself rather on his own neat folding--and the shirt was so
+snow-white and smooth that the boy thought at first his mother had
+laid out a fresh one while he was asleep. But no--yesterday was Sunday.
+Mrs. Conyfer would have thought another clean one on Monday very
+extravagant--besides, not even from her linen drawers, scented with
+lavender, could have come that delicious fragrance! Gratian snuffed and
+sniffed with ever-increasing satisfaction, as the words he had
+overheard in the night returned to his memory. And his stockings--they
+too were scented! What it was like I could not tell you, unless it be
+true, as old travellers say, that miles and miles away from the
+far-famed Spice Islands their fragrance may be perceived, wafted out to
+sea by the breeze. That, I think, may give you a faint idea of the
+perfume left by the South-wind on her godson's garments.
+
+"So it's true--I wasn't dreaming," thought the boy. "I wonder what the
+plot was that I couldn't hear about. I shall know before long, I
+daresay."
+
+At breakfast he noticed his mother looking at him curiously.
+
+"What is it, mother?" he said; "is my hair not neat?"
+
+"No, child. On the contrary, I was thinking how very tidy you look this
+morning. Your collar is so smooth and clean. Can it be the one you wore
+yesterday?"
+
+"Yes, mother," he replied, "just look how nice it is. And hasn't it a
+nice scent?"
+
+He got up as he spoke and stood beside her. She smoothed his collar with
+satisfaction.
+
+"It is certainly very well starched and ironed," she said. "Madge is
+improving; I must tell her so. That new soap too has quite a pleasant
+smell about it--like new-mown hay. It's partly the lavender in the
+drawers, I daresay."
+
+But Gratian smiled to himself--thinking he knew better!
+
+"Gratian," said his mother, two mornings later, as he was starting for
+school, "I had a message from the master yesterday. He wants to see me
+about you, but he is very busy, and he says if father or I should be in
+the village to-day or to-morrow, he would take it kindly if we would
+look in. I must call at the mill for father to-day--he's too busy to go
+himself--so I think I'll go on to school, and then we can walk back
+together. So don't start home this afternoon till I come."
+
+"No, mother, I won't," said Gratian. But he still hung about as if he
+had more to say.
+
+"What is it?" asked his mother. "You're not afraid the master's going to
+give a bad account of you?"
+
+"No, mother--not since I've cured myself of dreaming," he answered. "I
+was only wondering if I knew what it was he was going to ask you."
+
+"Better wait and know for sure," said his mother. So Gratian set off.
+
+But he found it impossible not to keep thinking and wondering about it
+to himself. Could it be anything about the Big House? Had Tony kept his
+promise, and told the master of the trick he had played, so that
+Gratian, and not he, should be chosen?
+
+"He didn't seem to care about it much," thought Gratian, "not near so
+much as I should--oh, dear no! Still it wouldn't be very nice for him to
+have to tell against himself, whether he cared about it or not."
+
+But as his mother had said, it was best to wait a while and know,
+instead of wasting time in fruitless guessing.
+
+Tony seemed quite cheerful and merry, and little Dolly was as friendly
+as possible. After the morning lessons were over and the other children
+dispersed, the schoolmaster called Gratian in again.
+
+"It is too cold now for you to eat your dinner in the playground, my
+boy," he said. "After you have run about a little, come in and find a
+warmer dining-room inside. But I have something else to say to you. I
+had a talk with Anthony Ferris yesterday."
+
+Gratian felt himself growing red, but he did not speak.
+
+"He told me of the trick he'd played you. A very unkind and silly trick
+it was, and so I said to him; but as he told it himself I won't punish
+him. He told me more, Gratian--of your finding his book and giving it
+back to him, when you might have done him an ill turn by keeping it."
+
+"I did keep it all one day, sir," said Gratian humbly.
+
+"Ah well, you did give it him in the end," said the master smiling. "I
+am pleased to see that you did the right thing in face of temptation.
+And Tony feels it himself. He's an honest-hearted lad and a clever one.
+He has done that piece of work I gave him well, and no doubt he stands
+as the head boy"--here the master stopped and seemed to be thinking over
+something. Then he went on again rather abruptly.
+
+"That was all I wanted to say to you just now, I think. Tony is really
+grateful to you, and if he can show it, he will. Did your father or
+mother say anything about coming to see me?"
+
+"Please, sir, mother's coming this afternoon. I'm to wait and go home
+with her."
+
+"Ah well, that's all right."
+
+But Gratian had plenty to think of while he ate his dinner. He was very
+much impressed by Tony's having really told.
+
+"I wonder," he kept saying to himself, "I do wonder if perhaps----"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE BIG HOUSE AND THE LADY
+
+  "The light of love, the purity of grace;
+  The mind, the music breathing from her face;
+  The heart, whose softness harmonised the whole."
+
+
+Mrs. Conyfer was waiting for Gratian at the gate of the schoolhouse when
+he came out.
+
+"We must make haste," she said; "I think it's going to rain."
+
+Gratian looked up at the sky, and sniffed the cold evening air.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I think it is."
+
+"It's not so cold quite as it was when I came down," Mrs. Conyfer went
+on--the dwellers at Four Winds often spoke of "coming down," when they
+meant going to the village--"that's perhaps because the rain is coming.
+I don't want to get my bonnet spoilt--I might have known it was going to
+rain when father said the wind was in the west."
+
+"Why does the west wind bring rain?" asked Gratian; "is it because it
+comes from the sea?"
+
+"Nay," said his mother, "I don't know. You should know better about such
+things than I--you that's always listening to the winds and hearing what
+they've got to say."
+
+Gratian looked up, a little surprised.
+
+"What makes you say that, mother?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Conyfer laughed a little.
+
+"I scarcely know," she said. "We always said of you when you were a baby
+that you seemed to hear words in the wind--you were always content to
+lie still, no matter how long you were left, if only the wind were
+blowing. And it seems to me even now that you're always happiest and
+best when there's wind about, though it's maybe only a fancy of mine."
+
+But Gratian looked pleased.
+
+"No, mother," he said, "I don't think it's a fancy. I think myself it's
+quite true."
+
+And he pulled off his cap as he spoke and let the wind blow his hair
+about, and lifted up his face as if inviting its caresses.
+
+"It's getting up," he said. "But I think we'll get home before the rain
+comes."
+
+His mother had not heard the whisper that had reached his ear through
+the gust of wind.
+
+"I will help you home, Gratian, both you and your mother, though she
+won't know it."
+
+He laughed to himself when he felt the gentle, steady way in which they
+were blown along--never had the long walk to the Farm seemed so short to
+Mrs. Conyfer.
+
+"Dear me," she said, when they were within a few yards of the gate, "I
+couldn't have believed we were home! It makes a difference when the wind
+is with us, I suppose."
+
+Gratian pulled her back a moment, as she was going in.
+
+"Mother," he said, "what was it the master wanted to say to you? Won't
+you tell me?"
+
+"I must speak first to father," she replied; "it's something which we
+must have his leave for first."
+
+Gratian could not ask any more, and nothing more was said to him till
+the next morning when he was starting for school. Then his mother came
+to the door with him.
+
+"I've a message for the master," she said. "Listen, Gratian. You must
+tell him from me that father and I have no objection to his doing as he
+likes about what he spoke to me of yesterday. He said he'd like to tell
+you about it himself--so I won't tell you any more. Maybe you'll not
+care about it when you hear it."
+
+"Ah--I don't think that," said the boy, as he ran off.
+
+He needed no blowing to school that morning. The way seemed short, even
+though it was still drizzling--a cold, disagreeable, small rain, which
+had succeeded the downpour of the night before. But Gratian cared little
+for rain--what true child of the moors could?--he rather liked it than
+otherwise, especially when it came drifting over in great sheets, almost
+blinding for the moment, and then again dispersed as suddenly, so that
+standing on the high ground one could see on the slopes beneath when it
+was raining and when it stopped. It gave one a feeling of being "above
+the clouds" that Gratian liked. But this morning there was nothing of a
+weather panorama of that kind--just sheer, steady, sapping rain, with no
+wind to interfere.
+
+"They are tired, I daresay," thought Gratian; "for they must have been
+hard at work last night, getting the clouds together for all this rain.
+I expect Golden-wings goes off altogether when it's so cold and dreary.
+I wonder where she is. I would like to see her home--it must be full of
+such beautiful colours and scents."
+
+"And mine--wouldn't you like to see mine?" whistled a sudden cold breath
+in his ear. "Yes, I have made you jump. But I'm not going to bring the
+snow just yet--I've just come down for a moment, to see how much rain
+Green-wings has got together. She mustn't waste it, you see. I can't
+have her interfering with my reservoirs for the winter. I hold with a
+good old-fashioned winter--a snowy Christmas and plenty of picture
+exhibitions for my pet artist, Jack Frost. A good winter's the
+healthiest in the end for all concerned."
+
+"Yes, I think so too," said Gratian. He wished to be civil to
+White-wings. It was interesting to have some one to talk to as he went
+along, and the North-wind in a mild mood seemed an agreeable companion,
+less snappish and jerky than her sister of the east.
+
+"That's a sensible boy," said the snow-bringer condescendingly; "you've
+something of the old northern spirit about you here on the moorlands
+still, I fancy. Ah! if you could see the north--the real north--I don't
+fancy you would care much about the sleepy golden lands you were
+dreaming of just now."
+
+"I'd like to _see_ them," replied the child; "I don't say I'd like to
+live in them always. But the scents and the colours--they must be very
+beautiful. I seem to know all about them when Golden-wings kisses me."
+
+"Humph," said the Spirit of the North. Both she and Gray-wings had a
+peculiar way of saying "humph" when Gratian praised either of the
+gentler sisters--"as for scents I don't say--scent is a stupid sort of
+thing. I don't understand anything about it. But _colours_--you're
+mistaken, I assure you, if you think the south can beat me in that.
+You've got your head full of the idea of snow--interminable ice-fields
+and all the rest of it. Why, my good boy, did you never hear of Arctic
+sunsets--not to speak of the Northern Lights? I could show you sunsets
+and sunrises such as you have never dreamt of--like rainbows painted on
+gold. Ah, it is a pity you cannot come with me!"
+
+"And why can't I?" asked Gratian. "I'm not afraid of the cold."
+
+The North-wind gave a whistle of good-natured contempt.
+
+"My dear, you'd have no time to be afraid or not afraid--you'd be dead
+before you'd even looked about you. Ah--it's a terrible inconvenience,
+those bodies of yours--if you were like us, now! But I mustn't waste my
+time talking, only as I was passing I thought I'd say a word or two.
+When my sisters are all together there's never any getting in a syllable
+edgeways. Good-bye, my child. We'll meet again oftener during the next
+few months."
+
+"Good-bye, Godmother White-wings," said Gratian, and a gust of wind
+rushing past him with a whistle seemed to answer, "Good-bye."
+
+"I'm very glad to have had a little talk with her," he said to himself;
+"she's much nicer than I thought she was, and she makes one feel so
+strong and brisk. Dear me--what wonderful places there must be up in the
+north where she lives!"
+
+The master called him aside after morning lessons.
+
+"Did your mother send any message to me, Gratian?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," and he repeated what Mrs. Conyfer had said.
+
+The schoolmaster looked pleased.
+
+"I'm glad she and your father have no objection," he said. "I think it
+may be a good thing for you in several ways. But I must explain it to
+you. You know the Big House as they call it, here? A lady and her son
+have come to stay there for a time--relations of the squire's----"
+
+"Yes, sir, I know," interrupted Gratian; "she plays the organ on Sunday
+afternoons, and her little boy is ill."
+
+"Not exactly ill, but he had a fall, and he mustn't walk about or stand
+much. It's dull for him, as at home he was used to companions. His
+mother asked me to send him one of my best boys--a boy who could read
+well for one thing--as a playmate. At first I thought of Tony Ferris,
+and I spoke of him. But Tony has begged me to choose you instead of
+him."
+
+Gratian raised his brown eyes and fixed them on the master's face.
+
+"Does Tony not want to go?" he asked. "I shouldn't like to take it from
+him if he wants to go."
+
+"I think he would be happier for you to go," said the master, "and
+perhaps you may be more suitable. Besides Tony thinks that he owes you
+something. He has told me of the trick he played you, as you know--and
+certainly you deserve to be chosen more than he. I am not sure that he
+would care much about it; but still it will give him pleasure to think
+he has got it for you, and we may let him have this pleasure."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Gratian thoughtfully. And then he added, "it was good
+of Tony to ask for it for me."
+
+"Yes, it was," agreed the master.
+
+"Then when am I to go?" asked Gratian.
+
+"This afternoon. I will let you off an hour or so earlier, and you can
+stay at the Big House till it is dark. It is no farther home from there
+than from here, if you go by the road at the back of it. We shall see
+how you get on, and then the lady will tell you about going again."
+
+Gratian still lingered.
+
+"What is it?" said the master. "Do you not think you shall like it?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, oh no," exclaimed the child. "I was only wondering. Are
+there pictures at the Big House, do you think, sir?"
+
+"Yes, I think there are some. Are you fond of pictures?"
+
+"I don't know, sir. I've never seen any real ones. But I've often
+thought about them, and fancied them in my mind. There are such lots of
+things I'd like to see pictures of that I can't see any other way."
+
+"Well, perhaps you will see some at the Big House," said the master with
+a smile.
+
+Out in the playground Gratian ran against Tony.
+
+"Has he told you?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Yes," said Gratian. "I'm to go this afternoon. It was very good of you,
+Tony, to want me to go instead of you."
+
+Tony got rather red.
+
+"I don't know that I'd a-cared about it much, Gratian," he said. "It
+wasn't that as cost me much. But to tell you the truth, I did want to
+get out of telling the master about the trick I'd played you. And I
+don't know as I'd have told it, but a mighty queer thing happened--it's
+thanks to that I told."
+
+"What was it?" asked Gratian.
+
+"It was at night after I was in bed. I'd put off telling, and I thought
+maybe it'd all be forgotten. And that night all of a sudden there came
+such a storm of wind that it woke me up--the window had burst open, and
+I swear to you, Gratian--I've not told any one else--I saw a figure all
+in white, and with white wings, leaning over my bed, as if it had
+brought the storm with it. I was so frightened I began to think of all
+the bad things I had done, and I hollered out, 'I'll tell master first
+thing to-morrow morning, I will.' And with that the wind seemed to go
+down as sudden as it came, and I heard a sort of singing, something like
+when the organ plays very low in church, and there was a beautiful sweet
+scent of flowers through the room; and I suppose I fell asleep again,
+for when I woke it was morning, and I could have fancied it was all a
+dream, for nobody else had heard the wind in the night."
+
+"We hear it most nights up at our place," said Gratian, "but I'm never
+frightened of it."
+
+"You would have been that night--leastways _I_ was. I durstn't go back
+from my word, dream or no dream--so now you know, Gratian, how I came to
+tell. And I hope you'll enjoy yourself at the Big House."
+
+"I shall thank you for it if I do, all the same, Tony," Gratian replied.
+
+"It's more in your way than mine. I'd feel myself such a great silly
+going among gentry folk like that," said Tony, as he scampered off to
+his dinner.
+
+About three o'clock that afternoon Gratian found himself at the gates of
+the Big House. He had often passed by that way and stood looking in, but
+he had never been within the gates, for they were always kept locked;
+and there had been a strange, almost sad look of loneliness and
+desertedness about the place, even though the gardens had not been
+allowed to be untidy or overrun. Now it looked already different; the
+padlock and chain were removed, and there were the marks of wheels upon
+the gravel. It seemed to Gratian that even if he had not known there
+were visitors in the old house he would have guessed it.
+
+He walked slowly up the avenue which led from the gates to the house. He
+was not the least afraid or shy, but he was full of interest and
+expectation. He wanted to see everything--to miss nothing, and even the
+walk up the avenue seemed to him full of wonder and charm. It _had_ a
+charm of its own no doubt, for at each side stood pine-trees like rows
+of sentinels keeping guard on all comers, tall, stately, and solemn,
+only now and then moving their heads with silent dignity, as if in reply
+to observations passing among them up there, too high to be heard. The
+pines round Gratian's home were not so tall or straight--naturally, for
+they had a great deal of buffeting to do in order to live at all, and
+this of course did not help them to grow tall or erect. Gratian looked
+up in wonder at the great height.
+
+"How I wish I knew what they say to each other up there," he said.
+
+But just then a drop of something cold falling on his face made him
+start. It was beginning to rain.
+
+"I wouldn't like to be wet when I first see the lady and the young
+gentleman," he thought. "I must be quick."
+
+So off he set at a run, which perhaps did not much hasten matters, for
+when he got to the hall door he was so out of breath that he had to
+stand still for several minutes before venturing to ring.
+
+The bell, when he did ring it, sounded sharp and hollow, almost like a
+bell ringing in an empty house. And when the door was opened, he saw
+that the large hall did look bare and empty, and he felt a little
+disappointed. But this feeling did not last long. Before he had time to
+say anything to the servant, a sweet, bright voice came sounding
+clearly.
+
+"Oh, here he is, Fergus," were the words she said, and in another
+instant the owner of the voice appeared. It was the lady of the organ.
+She came forward smiling, and holding out her hand, but Gratian gazed at
+her for a moment without speaking, nor seeming to understand that she
+was speaking to him. He had never seen any one like her before. She was
+tall and fair, and her face was truly lovely. But what made it so, more
+than the delicate features or the pretty soft colours, was its sunny
+brightness, which yet from time to time was veiled by a look of pitying
+sadness, almost sweeter. And at these times the intense blueness of her
+eyes grew paler and fainter, so that they looked almost gray, like the
+sea when a cloud comes over the sunny sky above; only as Gratian had
+never seen the sea, he could not think this to himself.
+
+What he did say to himself told it quite as well.
+
+"She is like Golden-wings and Green-wings mixed together," was his
+thought.
+
+And then having decided this, his mind seemed to grow clearer, the sort
+of confused bewilderment he had felt for a moment wafted itself away,
+and he distinguished the words she had repeated to him more than once.
+
+"You are the little boy Mr. Cornelius has kindly sent to see my poor
+little boy. It is kind too of you to come. I hope you and Fergus will be
+great friends."
+
+She thought he was shy when at first he did not answer. But looking at
+him again she saw that it was not shyness which was speaking out of his
+big brown eyes.
+
+"You are not afraid of me, are you?" she said smiling again.
+
+"Oh no," he replied. "I didn't mean to be rude. I couldn't be frightened
+of you. I was only thinking--I never saw anybody so beautiful as you
+before," he went on simply, "and it made me think."
+
+The lady flushed a little--a very little.
+
+"I am pleased that you like my face," she said. "I like yours too, and I
+am sure Fergus will. Will you come and see him now? He is waiting
+eagerly for you."
+
+She held out her hand again, and Gratian this time put his little brown
+one into it confidingly. And thus she led him out of the large, cold
+hall, down a short passage, rendered light and cheerful by a large
+window--here a door stood open, and a glow of warmth seemed to meet them
+as they drew near it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LITTLE FERGUS
+
+  "Old portraits round in order set,
+  Carved heavy tables, chairs, buffet
+        Of dark mahogany."
+
+  MRS. SOUTHEY
+
+
+For there was a bright fire burning in the room, which sent red rays
+flickering and dancing in all directions, lighting up the faded tints of
+the ancient curtains and covers, and bringing rich crimson shades out of
+the shining, old dark mahogany furniture. There were flowers too; a
+bouquet of autumn leaves--bronze and copper and olive--with two or three
+fragile "last roses" in the middle, on which Gratian's eyes rested with
+pleasure for a moment, on their way to the small figure--the most
+interesting object of all.
+
+He was lying on a little sofa, placed so as to be within reach of the
+fire's warmth, and yet near enough to the window for him to see out
+into the garden, to watch the life of the birds and the plants, the
+clouds and the breezes. The autumn afternoon looked later and darker now
+to Gratian as he glanced at it from within than when he was himself a
+part of it out-of-doors, and his eyes returned with pleasure to the
+nearer warmth and colour, though after the first momentary glimpse of
+the boy on the sofa a sort of shyness had made him look away.
+
+For the child was extremely pale and thin--he looked much more ill than
+Gratian had been prepared for, and this gave him a feeling of timidity
+that nothing else could have caused. But the lady soon put him at his
+ease.
+
+"Fergus, dear," she said, "here is the little friend you have been
+hoping for. Come over here near us, my dear boy"--for she had sat down
+on a low chair beside the couch, evidently her usual place--"and I will
+help you to get over the first few steps of making friends. To begin
+with," she said smiling, "do you know we don't know your name? That
+seems absurd, doesn't it? And you don't know ours."
+
+"Yes--I know _his_," said Gratian, smiling too, and with a little
+gesture towards the invalid, so gentle and half-timid that no one could
+have called it rude; "you have just said it--Fergus. I never heard that
+name before."
+
+"It is a Scotch name," said the lady. "One can almost fancy oneself in
+Scotland here. And tell us your name."
+
+"Gratian," he replied, "Gratian Conyfer."
+
+"What a nice name," said Fergus, speaking for the first time, "and what
+a queer one! I can say the same to you as you said to me, Gratian--I
+never heard that name before."
+
+"How did you come by it?" asked Fergus's mother.
+
+"I think it was because mother is called Grace, and there were several
+baby brothers that died, that were called for father," he replied.
+
+"And how old are you?" asked Fergus, raising himself a little on his
+elbow. "I'm eight and a half. I'm not so very small for my age when I
+stand up--am I, mother?"
+
+"No, dear," she answered with a little shadow over her bright face. "And
+you, Gratian?"
+
+"I am nine," he said; "but they say at school I don't look so much. Tony
+is twelve, but he is much, much bigger."
+
+"Tony--who is Tony?" asked Fergus; "is he your brother?"
+
+"Oh no, I have no brothers. He's the head boy at the school."
+
+"Yes," said Fergus's mother, "I remember about him. He was the boy Mr.
+Cornelius first thought of sending."
+
+"And why didn't he come?" asked Fergus.
+
+Gratian looked up at the lady.
+
+"Did the master tell you?" he asked. The lady smiled, and nodded her
+head.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I know the story. You may tell it to Fergus, Gratian;
+he would like to hear it. Now I am going away, for I have letters to
+write. In half an hour or so you shall have your tea. Would you like it
+here or in the library, Fergus?"
+
+"Oh, in the library," he said eagerly. "I haven't been there for two
+days, mother. And then Gratian can see the pictures--you told me he
+liked pictures?--and best of all, you can play the organ to us, little
+mother."
+
+"Then you feel better to-day, my boy?" she said, stooping to kiss the
+white forehead as she was leaving the room. "Some days I can't get him
+to like to move about at all," she added to Gratian.
+
+"Yes, I do feel better," he said. "I don't mind it hurting me when I
+don't feel that horrible way as if I didn't care for _anything_. Have
+you ever been ill, Gratian? Do you know how it feels?"
+
+Gratian considered.
+
+"I once had a sore throat," he said, "but I didn't mind very much. It
+was winter, and I had a fire in my room, and I liked to see the flames
+going dancing up the chimney."
+
+"Yes," said Fergus, "I know how you mean. I'm sure we must have the same
+thinkings about things, Gratian. Do you like music too, as much as
+pictures? Mother says people who like pictures very much, often like
+music too, and--and--there's something else that those kind of people
+like too, but I forget what."
+
+"Flowers," suggested Gratian; "flowers and trees, perhaps."
+
+"No," said Fergus, looking a little puzzled, "these would count in with
+pictures, don't you think? I'll ask mother--she said it so nicely. Don't
+you like when anybody says a thing so that it seems to fit in with other
+things?"
+
+"Yes," said Gratian, "I think I do. But I think things to myself,
+mostly--I've not got anybody much to talk to, except sometimes Jonas.
+He's got very nice thoughts, only he'd never say them except to Watch
+and me."
+
+"Who's Watch?" asked Fergus eagerly. "Is he a dog?"
+
+"He's our sheep-dog, and Jonas is the shepherd," replied Gratian.
+"They're sometimes alone with the sheep for days and days--out on the
+moors. It's so strange--I've been with them sometimes--it's like another
+world--to see the moors all round, ever so far, like the sea, I
+suppose--only I've never seen the sea--and not a creature anywhere,
+except some wild birds sometimes."
+
+"Stop," said Fergus, closing his eyes; "yes, I can see it now. Go on,
+Gratian--is the sky gray, or blue with little white clouds?"
+
+"Gray just now," said the boy, "and there's no wind that you can feel
+blowing. But it's coming--you know it's coming--now and then Watch
+pricks up his ears, for he can tell it much farther off than we can, and
+old Jonas pats him a little. Jonas has an old blue round cap--a
+shepherd's cap--and his face is browny-red, but his hair is nearly
+white, and his eyes are very blue. Can you see him, Fergus? And the
+sheep keep on browsing--they make a little scrumping noise when you are
+quite, quite close to them. And just before the wind really comes a
+great bird gives a cry--up, very high up--and it swoops down for a
+moment and then goes up again, till it looks just a little black speck
+against the sky. And all the time you know the wind is coming. Can you
+see it all, Fergus?"
+
+"All," said the boy; "it's beautiful. You must tell me pictures often,
+Gratian, till I can go out again. I never had any one who could make
+them come so, except mother's music--they come with that. Haven't you
+noticed that they come with music?"
+
+"I don't know," said Gratian. "I've never seen any real
+pictures--painted ones in big gold frames."
+
+"There are some here," said Fergus; "not very many, but some. I like a
+few of them--perhaps you will too. But I like the pictures that come and
+go in one's fancy best. That's the kind that mother's music brings me."
+
+"Yes," said Gratian, his eyes sparkling, "I understand."
+
+"I was sure you would," said Fergus, with a tiny touch of patronising in
+his tone, which Gratian was too entirely single-minded to see, or rather
+perhaps to object to if he did see it. "I knew the minute I saw you,
+you'd suit me. I'm very glad that other fellow didn't come instead of
+you. But, by the bye, you haven't told me about that--mother said you'd
+tell me."
+
+Gratian related the story of his satchel of stones. Fergus was boy
+enough to laugh a little, though he called it a mean trick; but when
+Gratian told of having found his books again, he looked puzzled.
+
+"How could you find them?" he asked. "It was nearly dark, didn't you
+say?"
+
+"I don't quite know," replied Gratian, and he spoke the truth. It was
+always difficult for him to distinguish between real and fancy, dreaming
+and waking, in all concerning his four friends, and in some curious way
+this difficulty increased so much if he ever thought of talking about
+them, that he felt he was not meant to do so. "I have fancies
+sometimes--like dreams, perhaps--that I can't explain. And they help me
+often--when I am in any trouble they help me."
+
+"I don't see how fancies can help you to find things that are lost,"
+said Fergus, who, except in his own particular way, was more practical
+than Gratian, "unless you mean that you dream things, and your dreams
+come true."
+
+"It's a little like that," Gratian replied. "I think I had a sort of
+dream about coming here. I did so want to come--most of all since I
+heard the lady play in church."
+
+"Yes," said Fergus, "isn't mother's playing beautiful? I've not heard
+her play in church for ever so long, but I'm so glad there's an organ
+here. She plays to me every day. I like music best of everything in the
+world--don't you?"
+
+To which Gratian gave his old answer--"I don't know yet."
+
+Then they began talking of more commonplace things. Each told the other
+of his daily life and all his childish interests. Fergus was greatly
+struck by the account of Gratian's home--the old house with the queer
+name.
+
+"How I should like to see it," he said, "and to feel the wind blow."
+
+"The winds," corrected Gratian, "the four winds."
+
+"The _four_ winds," repeated Fergus. "North, south, east, and west. They
+don't blow all together, do they?"
+
+"I think they do sometimes. Yes, I know they do--at night I'm sure I've
+heard them all four together, like tones in music."
+
+Fergus looked delighted.
+
+"Ah, you have to come back to music, you see," he said. "There's nothing
+tells everything and explains everything as well as music."
+
+"You must have thought about it a great deal," said Gratian admiringly.
+"I've only just begun to think about things, and I think it's very
+puzzling, though I'm older than you. I don't know if music would explain
+things to me."
+
+"Perhaps not as much as to me," said Fergus. "You see it's been my best
+thing--ever since I was five years old I've been lying like this. At
+home the others are very kind, but they can't quite understand," he
+added, shaking his head a little sadly; "they can all run about and jump
+and play. And when children can do all that, they don't need to think
+much. Still it is very dull without them--that is why I begged mother to
+try to get me somebody to play with. But I think you're better than
+that, Gratian. I think you understand more--how is it? You've never been
+ill or had to lie still."
+
+"No," said the boy, "but I've had no brothers and sisters to play with
+me. And perhaps it's with being born at Four Winds--mother says so
+herself."
+
+"I daresay it is," said Fergus gravely.
+
+"Won't you get better soon?" asked Gratian, looking at Fergus with
+profound sympathy. For, gentle as he was, the idea of having to lie
+still, not being able to run about on the moors and feel his dear winds
+on his face, having even to call to others to help him before he could
+get to the window and look out on the sunshine--it seemed perhaps more
+dreadful to Gratian than it would have done to an ordinary, healthy
+child like Tony Ferris. "Won't you too be able to walk and run
+about--even if it's only a little?"
+
+"I hope so," Fergus replied. "Mother says I mustn't expect ever to be
+quite strong. But they say I'm getting better. That's why mother brought
+me here. Do you know I can eat ever so much more than when I came? If I
+can get well enough to play--even on a piano--I wouldn't mind so much. I
+could make up all sorts of things for myself then--I could make pictures
+even of the moorland and Four Winds Farm, I think, Gratian."
+
+"I'll try to tell you them--I'll try to make some of my fancies into
+stories and pictures," said Gratian; "then afterwards, when you get well
+and can play, you can make them into music."
+
+Just then the door opened, and Fergus's mother came in.
+
+"Tea is ready," she said, "and Andrew is going to carry you into the
+library, Fergus."
+
+She looked at the boy a little anxiously as she spoke, and Gratian saw
+that a slight shadow of pain or fear crept over Fergus's face.
+
+"Mother," he said, "would it perhaps be better to stay here after all?
+You could show Gratian the pictures."
+
+The lady looked very disappointed.
+
+"The tea is so nicely set out," she said, "and you know you can't hear
+the organ well from here. And Andrew doesn't hurt you--he is very
+careful."
+
+Gratian looked on, anxious too. He understood that it must be good for
+Fergus to go into another room, otherwise his mother would not wish it.
+Fergus caught sight of the eagerness on Gratian's face, and it carried
+the day.
+
+"I will go," he said; "here, Andrew."
+
+A man-servant, with a good-humoured face and a strong pair of arms, came
+forward and lifted the child carefully.
+
+"You walk beside me, Gratian, and hold my hand. If it hurts much I will
+pinch you a little, but don't let mother know," he said in a whisper;
+and thus the little procession moved out of the room right across the
+hall and down another corridor.
+
+"There must be a window open," said Fergus; "don't you feel the air
+blowing in? Oh don't shut it, mother," as the lady started forward,
+"it's such nice soft air--scented as if they were making hay. Oh, it's
+delicious."
+
+His mother seemed a little surprised.
+
+"There is no window open, dear," she said. "It must be that you feel the
+change from the warm room to the hall. Perhaps I should have covered you
+up."
+
+"Oh no, no," repeated Fergus. "I'm not the least cold. It's not a cold
+wind at all. Gratian, don't _you_ feel it?"
+
+"Yes," said Gratian, holding Fergus's hand firmly. But his eyes had a
+curious look in them, as if he were smiling inwardly to himself.
+
+"Golden-wings, you darling," he murmured, "I know you're there--thank
+you so much for blowing away his pain."
+
+In another moment Fergus was settled on a couch in the library--a lofty
+room with rows and rows of books on every side, nearly up to the
+ceiling. It would have looked gloomy and dull but for the cheerful fire
+in one corner and the neat tea-table drawn up before it; as it was, the
+sort of solemn mystery about it was very pleasing to Gratian.
+
+"Isn't it nice here?" said Fergus. "I'm so glad I came. And do you know
+it didn't hurt me a bit. The fresh air that came in seemed to blow the
+pain away."
+
+"I think you really must be getting stronger," said his mother, with a
+smile of hopefulness on her face, as she busied herself with the
+tea-table; "you have brought us good luck, Gratian."
+
+"I believe he has," said Fergus. "Mother, do you know what he has been
+telling me? He was born where the four winds meet--he _must_ be a lucky
+child, mustn't he, mother?"
+
+"I should say so, certainly," said the lady with a smile. "I wonder if
+it is as good as being born on a Sunday."
+
+"Oh far better, mother," said Fergus; "there are lots of children born
+on Sundays, but I never heard of one before that was born at the winds'
+meeting-place."
+
+"Gratian will be able to tell you stories, I daresay," said his
+mother--"stories which the winds tell him, perhaps--eh, Gratian?"
+
+Gratian smiled.
+
+"He has been telling me some pictures already," said Fergus; "oh, mother
+I'm so happy."
+
+"My darling," said his mother. "Now let me see what a good appetite you
+have. You must be hungry too, Gratian, my boy. You have a long walk home
+before you."
+
+Gratian was hungry, but he hardly felt as if he could eat--there was so
+much to look at and to think about. Everything was so dainty and pretty;
+though he was well accustomed at the Farm to the most perfect
+cleanliness and neatness, it was new to him to see the sparkling silver,
+the tea-kettle boiling on the spirit-lamp with a cheerful sound, the
+pretty china and glass, and the variety of bread and cakes to tempt poor
+Fergus's appetite. And the lady herself--with her forget-me-not eyes and
+sweet voice. Gratian felt as if he were in fairyland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MUSIC AND COUNSEL
+
+  "What is this strange new life, this finer sense,
+  Which lifts me out of self, and bids me
+                    ... rise to glorious thought
+  High hopes, and inarticulate fantasies?"
+
+  "Voices."--_Songs of Two Worlds_
+
+
+After tea Fergus's mother turned to the two boys.
+
+"Shall I play to you now?" she said, "or shall we first show Gratian the
+pictures?"
+
+"Play the last thing, please," said Fergus. "I like to keep it in my
+mind when I go to bed--it makes me sleep better. We can go into the
+gallery now and show Gratian the pictures; it would be too dark if we
+waited."
+
+"It is rather dark already," said the lady, "still Gratian can see some,
+and the next time he comes he can look at them again."
+
+She rang the bell, and when Andrew came, she told him to wheel Fergus's
+couch into the picture-gallery, which opened into the library where they
+were.
+
+Andrew opened a double door at the other end of the room from that by
+which they had come in, and then he gently wheeled forward the couch on
+which Fergus was lying, and pushed it through the doorway. The gallery
+was scarcely large enough to deserve the name, but to Gratian's eyes it
+looked a very wonderful place. It was long and rather narrow, and the
+light came from the top, and along the sides and ends were hung a good
+many pictures. All down one side were portraits--gentlemen with wigs,
+and ladies with powder, and some in queer, fancy dresses, mostly looking
+stiff and unnatural, though among them were some beautiful faces, and
+two or three portraits of children, which caught Gratian's eye.
+
+"What do you think of them?" asked Fergus.
+
+Gratian hesitated.
+
+"I don't think people long ago could have been as pretty as they are
+now," he said at last, "except that lady in the long black dress--oh,
+she is very pretty, and so is the red little boy with the dog, and the
+two girls blowing soap-bubbles. The big one has got eyes like--like the
+lady's," he added half-timidly.
+
+The lady looked pleased.
+
+"You have a quick eye, Gratian," she said. "The pictures you admire are
+the best here, and that little girl is my great-grandmother. Now, look
+at the other side. These are pictures of all kinds--not family ones."
+
+Gratian followed her in silence. The pictures were mostly
+landscapes--some so very old and dark that one could scarcely
+distinguish what they were. And some of which the colours were brighter,
+the boy did not care for any better--they were not like any skies or
+trees he had ever seen or even imagined, and he felt disappointed.
+
+Suddenly he gave a little cry.
+
+"Oh, I like that--I do like that," he said, and he glanced up at the
+lady for approval.
+
+She smiled again.
+
+"Yes," she said, "it is a wonderful picture. Quite as much a picture of
+the wind as of the sea."
+
+Gratian gazed at it with delight. The scene was on the coast, on what
+one might call a playfully stormy day. The waves came dancing in, their
+crests flashing in the sunshine, pursued and tossed by the wind; and up
+above, the little clouds were scudding along quite as busy and eager
+about _their_ business, whatever it was, as the white-sailed
+fishing-boats below.
+
+"Do you like it so very much?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," the boy replied, "that's like what I fancied pictures were. I've
+never seen the sea, but I can feel it must be like that."
+
+And after this he did not seem to care to see any others.
+
+[Illustration: And when she sat down to play the light sparkled and
+glowed on her fair hair, making it look like gold.]
+
+Fergus too was getting a little tired of lying alone while his mother
+and Gratian made the tour of the gallery. So Andrew was called to wheel
+him back again to the other door of the library, from whence he could
+best hear the organ. It stood at one side of the large hall, in a recess
+which had probably been made on purpose. It was dark in the recess even
+at mid-day, and now the dusk was fast increasing, so the lady lit the
+candles fixed at each side of the music-desk, and when she sat down to
+play the light sparkled and glowed on her fair hair, making it look like
+gold.
+
+Gratian touched Fergus.
+
+"Doesn't it look pretty?" he said, pointing to the little island of
+light in the gloomy hall.
+
+Fergus nodded.
+
+"I always think mother turns into an angel when she plays," he said.
+"Now, let's listen, Gratian, and afterwards you can tell me what
+pictures the music makes to you, and I'll tell you what it makes to me."
+
+The organ was old and rather out of repair, and Andrew was not very well
+used to blowing. That made it, I think, all the more wonderful that the
+lady could bring such music out of it. It was not so fine and perfect,
+doubtless, as what Gratian had heard from her in church on the Sunday
+afternoon, but still it was beautiful enough for him to think of nothing
+but his delight in listening. She played several pieces--some sad and
+plaintive, some joyful and triumphant, and then Gratian begged her to
+play the last he had heard at church.
+
+"That is a good choice for our good-night one," she said. "It is a
+favourite of Fergus's too. He calls it his good-night hymn."
+
+Fergus did not speak--he was lying with his eyes shut, in quiet
+happiness, and as the last notes died away, "Don't speak yet, Gratian,"
+he said, "you don't know what I am seeing--flocks of birds are slowly
+flying out of sight, the sun has set, and one hears a bell in the
+distance ringing very faintly; one by one the lights are going out in
+the cottages that I see at the foot of the hill, and the night is
+creeping up. That is what _I_ see when mother plays the good-night.
+What do you see, Gratian?"
+
+"The moor, I think," said the boy, "our own moor, up, far up, behind our
+house. It must be looking just as I see it now, at this very minute;
+only the music is coming from some place--a church, I think, _very_ far
+away. The wind is bringing it--the south wind, not the one from the sea.
+And you know that when the music is being played in the church there are
+lots of people all kneeling so that you can't see their faces, and I
+think some are crying softly."
+
+"Yes," said Fergus, "that isn't so bad. I can see it too. You'll soon
+get into the way, Gratian," he went on, with his funny little
+patronising tone, "of making music-pictures if we practice it together.
+That's the best of music, you see. It makes itself and pictures too. Now
+pictures never make you music."
+
+"But they give you feelings--like telling you stories--at least that one
+I like so much does. And I suppose there are many pictures like that--as
+beautiful as that?" he went on, as if asking the question from the lady,
+who had left the organ now and was standing by Fergus, listening to what
+they were saying.
+
+"Yes," she said, "there are many pictures I should like you to see, and
+many places too. Places which make one wish one could paint them the
+moment one sees them. Perhaps it is pictures you are going to care most
+for, little Gratian? If so, they will be music and poetry and everything
+to you--they will be your voice."
+
+"_Poetry_," repeated Fergus, "that's the other thing--the thing I
+couldn't remember the name of, Gratian."
+
+Gratian looked rather puzzled.
+
+"I don't know much about poetry," he said. "But I don't know about
+anything. I never saw pictures before. There are so many things to know
+about," he added with a little sigh.
+
+"Don't be discouraged," said the lady smiling. "Everybody has to find
+out and to learn and to work hard."
+
+"Has everybody a voice?" asked Gratian.
+
+"No, a great many haven't, and some who have don't use it well, which is
+worse than having none. But don't look so grave; we shall have plenty of
+time for talking about all these things. I think you must be going home
+now, otherwise your mother will be wondering what has become of you. And
+thank her for letting us have you, and say I hope you may come again on
+Saturday. You don't mind the long walk home--for it is almost dark, you
+see?"
+
+"Oh no, I don't mind the dark or anything like that," said Gratian with
+a little smile, which the lady, even though her forget-me-not eyes were
+so very clear, could not quite understand.
+
+For he was thinking to himself, "How could I be afraid, with my four
+godmothers to take care of me, wherever I were?"
+
+Then he turned to say good-bye to Fergus, and the little fellow
+stretched up his two thin arms and clasped them round the moorland
+child's neck.
+
+"I love you," he said; "kiss me and come again soon, and let us make
+stories to tell each other."
+
+The lady kissed him too.
+
+"Thank you for being so good to Fergus," she said.
+
+And Gratian, looking up in her face, wished he could tell her how much
+he had liked all he had seen and heard, but somehow the words would not
+come. All he could say was, "Thank you, and good-night."
+
+Out-of-doors again, especially when he got as far as the well-known road
+he passed along every day, it seemed all like a dream. All the way down
+the avenue of pines he kept glancing back to see the lights in the
+windows of the Big House--he liked to think of Fergus and his mother in
+there by the fire, talking of the afternoon and making, perhaps, plans
+for another.
+
+"I hope his back won't hurt him to-night when they carry him up to bed,"
+he said to himself. "It was very good of Golden-wings to come. But I'm
+afraid she can't be here much more, now that the winter is so near.
+Green-wings might perhaps come sometimes, but----"
+
+A sudden puff of wind in his face, and a voice in his ear, interrupted
+him. The wind felt sharp and cold, and he did not need the tingling of
+his cheeks to tell him who was at hand.
+
+"But what?" said the cutting tones of Gray-wings. "Ah, I know what you
+were going to say, Master Gratian. White-wings and I are too sharp and
+outspoken for your new friends! Much you know about it. On the contrary,
+nothing would do the lame boy more good than a nice blast from the
+north, once he is able to be up and about again. It was for the moorland
+air the doctors, with some sense for once, sent him up here. And I am
+sure you must know it isn't Golden-wings and Green-wings only who are to
+be met with on the moors."
+
+"I'm very sorry if I've offended you," said Gratian, "but you needn't be
+quite so cross about it. I don't mind you being sharp when I deserve it,
+but I've been quite good to-day, _quite_ good. I'm sure the lady
+wouldn't like me if I wasn't good."
+
+"Humph!" said Gray-wings. At least she meant it to be "humph," and
+Gratian understood it so, but to any one else it would have sounded more
+like "whri--i--zz," and you would have put up your hand to your head at
+once to be sure that your cap or hat wasn't going to fly off. "Humph!
+_I_ don't set up to be perfect, though I might boast a little more
+experience, a few billions of years more, of this queer world of yours
+than you. And I've been pretty well snubbed in my time and kept in my
+proper place--to such an extent, indeed, that I don't now even quarrel
+with having a _very_ much worse name than I deserve. It's good for one's
+pride, so I make a wry face and swallow it, though of course, all the
+same, it must be a very pleasant feeling to know that one has been
+quite, _quite_ good. I wish you'd tell me what it's like."
+
+"You're very horrid and unkind, Gray-wings," said Gratian, feeling
+almost ready to cry. "Just when I was so happy, to try and spoil it all.
+Tell me what you think I've not been good about and I'll listen, but
+you needn't go mocking at me for nothing."
+
+There was no answer, and Gratian thought perhaps Gray-wings was feeling
+ashamed of herself. But he was much mistaken. She was only reserving her
+breath for a burst of laughter. Gratian of course knew it was laughter,
+though I don't suppose either you or I would have known it for that.
+
+"What is it that amuses you so?" asked the boy.
+
+"It's Green-wings--you can't see her unfortunately--she's posting down
+in such a hurry. She thinks I tease you, and she knows I'm in rather a
+mischievous mood to-night. But they've caught her--she can't get past
+the corner over there, where the Wildridge hills are--and she is in such
+a fuss. The hills never like her to run past without paying them a visit
+if they can help it, and she's too soft-hearted to go on her way
+will-ye, nill-ye, as I do. So you'll have to trust to me to take you
+home after all, my dear godchild."
+
+"Dear Green-wings," said Gratian, "I don't like her to be anxious about
+me."
+
+"Bless you, she's always in a pathetic humour about some one or
+something," said Gray-wings.
+
+"I don't mind you taking me home if you won't mock at me," said Gratian.
+"Are you really displeased with me? Have I done anything naughty without
+knowing it?"
+
+Gray-wings's tone suddenly changed. Never had her voice sounded so
+gentle and yet earnest.
+
+"No, my child. I only meant to warn you. It is my part both to correct
+and to warn--of the two I would rather, by far, warn. Don't get your
+little head turned--don't think there is nothing worth, nothing
+beautiful, except in the new things you may see and hear and learn. And
+never think yourself _quite_ anything. That is always a mistake. What
+will seem new to you is only another way of putting the old--and the
+path to any real good is always the same--never think to get on faster
+from leaving it. You can't understand all this yet, but you will in
+time. Now put your arms out, darling--I am here beside you. Clasp them
+round my neck; never mind if it feels cold--there. I have you safe, and
+here goes----"
+
+A whirl, a rapid upbearing, a rush of cold, fresh air, and a pleasant,
+dreamy feeling, as when one is rocked in a little boat at sea. Gratian
+closed his eyes--he _was_ tired, poor little chap, for nothing is more
+tiring than new sights and feelings--and knew no more till he found
+himself lying on the heather, a few yards from the Farm gates.
+
+He looked about him--it was quite night by now--he felt drowsy still,
+but no longer tired, and not cold--just pleasantly warm and comfortable.
+
+"Gray-wings must have wrapped me up somehow," he said to himself. "She's
+very kind, really. But I must run in--what would mother think if she saw
+me lying here?"
+
+And he jumped up and ran home.
+
+The gate was open, the door of the house was open too, and just within
+the porch stood his mother.
+
+"Is that you, Gratian?" she said, as she heard his step.
+
+"Yes, mother," he replied; and as he came into the light he looked up at
+her. She was much, much older-looking than Fergus's mother, for she had
+not married young, and Gratian was the youngest of several, the others
+of whom had died. But as he glanced at her sunburnt face, and saw the
+love shining out of her eyes, tired and rather worn by daily work as she
+was, she somehow reminded him of the graceful lady with the sweet blue
+eyes.
+
+"I understand some of what Gray-wings said," he thought. "It's the same
+in mother's face and in hers when she looks at Fergus."
+
+And he held up his mouth for a kiss.
+
+"Have you been happy at the Big House?" Mrs. Conyfer asked. "Were they
+kind to you? She seems a kind lady, if one can trust to pretty looks."
+
+"Oh! she's very kind," answered Gratian eagerly; "and so's Fergus. He's
+her boy, mother--he can't walk, nor scarcely stand. But he's getting
+better--the air here will make him better."
+
+"It's to be hoped so, I'm sure," said the farmer's wife, with great
+sympathy in her tone. "It must be a terrible grief--the poor child--I
+couldn't find it in my heart to refuse to let you go when Mr. Cornelius
+told me of his affliction. But you were happy, and they were good to
+you?"
+
+"Oh, mother! yes--happier than ever I was in my life."
+
+Mrs. Conyfer smiled and yet sighed a little. She knew her child was not
+altogether like his compeers of the moor country--she was proud of it,
+and yet sometimes afraid with a vague misgiving.
+
+"Come in and warm yourself--it's a cold evening. There's some hot girdle
+cakes and a cup of Fernflower's milk for your supper--though maybe you
+had so many fine things to eat at the Big House that you won't be
+hungry."
+
+"Ah, but I am, though," he said brightly; and the big kitchen looked so
+cheery, and the little supper so tempting, that Gratian smiled with
+satisfaction.
+
+"How good of you to make it so nice for me, mother!" he said. "I could
+never like _anywhere_ better than my own home, however beautiful it
+was."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE STORY OF THE SEA-GULL
+
+  "Now my brothers call from the bay,
+  Now the great winds shoreward blow,
+  Now the salt tides seaward flow,
+  Now the wild white horses play,
+  Champ and chafe and toss in the spray,
+  Children dear, let us away!
+  This way, this way!"
+
+  _The Forsaken Merman_
+
+
+The winter--the real winter, such as it is known up in that
+country--came on slowly that year. There was no snow and but little
+frost before Christmas. Fergus gained ground steadily, and his mother,
+who at first had dreaded the experiment of the bleak but bracing air,
+was so encouraged that she stayed on from week to week. And through
+these weeks there was never a half-holiday which the two boys did not
+spend together.
+
+Gratian was learning much--more than even those who knew him best had
+full understanding of; much, much more than he himself knew.
+
+"He is like a different child," said the schoolmaster one day to the
+lady, when she had looked in as she was passing through the village; "if
+you had seen him a year ago; he seemed always dreaming or in the clouds.
+I really thought I should never succeed in teaching him anything. You
+have opened his mind."
+
+"His mind had begun to open before he ever saw me, Mr. Cornelius," said
+Fergus's mother with a smile. "It is like a flower--it asks nothing but
+to be allowed to grow. He is a very uncommon child--one could imagine
+that some specially happy influences surrounded him. He seems to take in
+and to feel interest in so many different things. I wonder what he will
+grow up."
+
+"Ah yes, ma'am," said the schoolmaster with a sigh. "It is a pity to
+think of his being no more than his father before him. But yet, what can
+one do?"
+
+"One would like at least to find out what he _might_ be," she said
+thoughtfully. "He will be a _good_ man, whether he ever leaves the moors
+or not--of that I feel sure. And if it is his duty to stay in this
+quiet corner of the world, I suppose we must not regret it."
+
+"I suppose not. I _try_ to think so," said the schoolmaster. But from
+something in his tone the lady suspected that he was looking back rather
+sadly on dreams, long ago past, of his own future--dreams which had
+never come to pass, and left him but the village schoolmaster.
+
+And her sympathy with this half-understood disappointment made her think
+still more of Gratian.
+
+"Cornelius would live again in this child if he should turn out one of
+the great few," she thought to herself.
+
+It was one of the afternoons Gratian now always spent with Fergus. She
+could leave her lame boy with perfect comfort in his friend's care, sure
+that he would be both safe and happy. As she made her way up the pine
+avenue and drew near to the house, she heard bright voices welcoming
+her.
+
+"Mother dear," Fergus called out, "I have walked twelve times along the
+south terrace--six times up and six times down--with Gratian's arm. It
+is so sheltered there--just a nice little soft breeze. Do you know,
+Gratian, I so often notice that breeze when you are here? It is as if it
+came with you."
+
+"But it is getting colder now, my boy," she answered. "You must come in.
+I have been to see Mr. Cornelius, Gratian. I am so glad to hear that he
+is pleased with your lessons. I would not like him to think that being
+with us distracted your attention."
+
+"I'm sure it doesn't, ma'am," said Gratian simply. "So often the things
+you tell me about or read to us, or that I hear about somehow when I am
+here, seem to come in just at the right minute, and to make my lessons
+easier. I have never found lessons so nice as this winter."
+
+"I don't like lessons," said Fergus. "I never shall like them."
+
+"You will have to look upon them as necessary evils then," said his
+mother.
+
+"I usedn't to like them," said Gratian. "_Now_ I often think I'd like to
+go on till I'm quite big."
+
+"Well, so you can, can't you?" said Fergus.
+
+"No," Gratian replied; "boys like me have to stop when they're big
+enough to help their fathers at home, and I've no big brother like Tony.
+I'll have to stop going to school before very long. I used to think I'd
+be very glad. Now I'd be sorry even if I was to be a shepherd."
+
+"How do you mean?" asked the lady.
+
+Gratian looked up at her with his soft brown eyes.
+
+"I used to think being a shepherd and lying out on the heather all
+day--alone with the sheep and Watch, like old Jonas--would be the best
+life of any. But now I want to know things. I think one can fancy better
+when one knows more. And I'd like to do more than fancy."
+
+"What would you like to do?" asked Fergus's mother. "Would you like to
+learn to _make_ music as well as to play it? That is what Fergus wants
+to do."
+
+Gratian shook his head.
+
+"I don't know," he replied. "I don't know _yet_. And isn't it best not
+to plan about it, because I know father will need me on the farm?"
+
+"Perhaps it is best," she said. But she answered as if thinking of
+something else at the same time.
+
+And then Andrew came out to help Fergus up the steps into the house,
+where tea was waiting for them in the library.
+
+Fergus's mother was rather tired. She had walked some distance to see a
+poor woman who was ill that afternoon.
+
+"Don't ask me to play much to-day, my dear boys," she said. "I never
+like to play much when I am tired; it doesn't seem fair to the music."
+
+"Then you sha'n't play at all, mother darling," said Fergus. "Gratian,
+I'll tell you what; you shall tell mother and me a story. That will rest
+her nicely."
+
+Gratian looked up hesitatingly.
+
+"He tells such nice stories," Fergus went on.
+
+"Does he often tell them?" asked the lady.
+
+"Yes, when we are alone," said Fergus.
+
+"The music makes me think of them very often," said Gratian. "It makes
+Fergus see pictures, and it makes me think stories. Sometimes I can see
+pictures too, but I think I like stories best."
+
+"He made a beauty the other day, about a Princess whose eyes were
+forget-me-nots, so that whoever had once seen her could never forget her
+again; and if they were good people it made them very happy, but if they
+were naughty people it made them very unhappy--only it did them all good
+somehow in the end. Gratian made it come right."
+
+"That sounds very pretty," said the lady. "Did that come out of my
+music?"
+
+"No," said the boy, "that story came mostly out of your eyes. I called
+you the lady with the forget-me-not eyes the first Sunday in church."
+
+He spoke so simply that the lady could not help smiling.
+
+"My eyes thank you for your pretty thoughts of them," she said. "Will
+you tell that story again?"
+
+"No," Fergus interrupted. "I want a new one. You were to have one ready
+for to-day, Gratian."
+
+"I have only a very little one, but I will tell it, if you like," said
+Gratian. "It isn't exactly like a story. There isn't anything wonderful
+in it like in the one about the Princess, or the one about the
+underground fairies."
+
+"No, that _was_ a beauty," said Fergus. "But never mind if this one
+isn't quite so nice," he added, condescendingly.
+
+So Gratian began.
+
+"It is about a sea-gull," he said. "You know about them, of course, for
+you have been at the sea. This was a little, young sea-gull. It had not
+long learnt to fly, and sea-gulls need to fly very well, for often they
+have to go many miles without a rest when they are out at sea, unless
+there happens to be a ship passing or a rock standing up above the
+water, or even a bunch of seaweed floating--that might do for a young
+bird that is not very heavy. There was very stormy weather the year this
+sea-gull and his brothers and sisters were hatched, and sometimes the
+father and mother sea-gulls were quite frightened to let them try to
+fly, for fear they should be beaten down by the storm winds and not have
+strength to rise again. It is quite different, you see, from little
+land-birds learning to fly. They can just flutter a little way from one
+twig to another near the ground, so that if they do fall they can't be
+much hurt. Sea-gulls need to have brave hearts even when they are quite
+little. This sea-gull was very brave, almost too brave. He loved the sea
+so dearly that while he was still a nestling, peeping out from his home,
+high up on a ledge of rock, at the dancing, flashing waves down below,
+he longed to be among them. He felt as if he almost would go mad with
+joy if only his mother would let him dash off with her, whirling and
+curving about in the air, with nothing below but the great ocean. And he
+would scarcely believe her and his father when they told him that it
+wasn't so easy to fly as it looked--not at the beginning, and that birds
+had to learn by degrees. At last one day the father, who had been out
+sniffing about, came in and told the mother it would be a good day for a
+beginning. So all the four young ones got ready, and stood at the edge
+of the nest in great excitement. I think it must have been very funny
+to see them at first--they were so awkward and clumsy. But they didn't
+hurt themselves--for the old birds kept them at first among the rocks
+where they couldn't fall far. And our sea-gull wasn't quite so sure of
+himself the next day, nor quite so impatient to go on flying, and I
+daresay he got on better when he had become less conceited. When they
+could fly a little better the father and mother took them to a little
+bay, where there was nice soft sand, and where the wind blew gently, and
+there they got on very well. And there they should have been content to
+stay till the spring storms were over and their wings had grown
+stronger. They all were quite content except the one I am telling you
+of."
+
+"What was his name?" asked Fergus.
+
+"He hasn't got one," Gratian replied, "but we can make him one. I
+daresay it would be better."
+
+"Call him White-wings," said Fergus.
+
+"No," said Gratian, "that won't do," though he didn't say why. "Besides
+his wings weren't all white. We'll call him 'Quiver,' because he was
+always quivering with impatience. Well, they were all quite content
+except Quiver, and he was very discontented. He looked longingly over
+the sea, wishing so to be in the midst of the flocks of birds he saw
+sparkling in the sunshine; and at last one morning when his father and
+mother had gone off for a good fly by themselves, which they well
+deserved, poor things, after all their trouble with the little ones, he
+stood up in the nest, flapping his impatient wings, and said to the
+three others that he too was going off on his own account. The brothers
+and sisters begged him not, but it was no use--off he would go, he was
+in such a hurry to see the world and to feel independent. Well, he got
+on pretty well at first; the sea was far out, and there were several
+rocks sticking up which he could rest on, and he found it so easy that
+he was tempted to fly out farther than he had intended, going from one
+rock to the other. And he didn't notice how far he had gone till he had
+been resting a while on a rock a good way out, and then looking round he
+couldn't tell a bit where he was, for there was nothing but sea all
+round him. He couldn't think what had become of all the other points of
+rocks--they seemed to have disappeared. But just as he was beginning to
+feel rather frightened a number of gulls flew up and lighted on the
+rock. They were all chattering and very excited.
+
+"'We must make haste,' they said, 'and get to the shore as fast as we
+can before the storm is on us. And we must shelter there till we can get
+back to our own rocks.'
+
+"They only rested a moment or two, and then got ready to start again.
+Quiver stood up and flapped his wings to attract attention.
+
+"'May I fly with you?' he said. 'I'm afraid I don't quite know the way.'
+
+"They looked at him in surprise.
+
+"'What are you doing away from your home--a young fledgling like you?'
+they said. 'Come with us if you like, it's your only chance, but you'll
+probably never get to shore.'
+
+"Oh how frightened he was, and how he wished he'd stayed at home! But he
+flew away with them, for it was, as they said, his only chance, and what
+he suffered was something dreadful. And when at last he reached the
+shore, it was only to drop down and lie on the sands gasping and
+bruised, and, as he thought, dying. A man that was passing, in a hurry
+himself to get home before the storm, picked up poor Quiver, half out of
+pity, half because he thought his little master might like to have his
+feathers if he died, or to make a pet of him if he lived. And Quiver,
+who was quite fainting by this time, woke up to find himself lying in a
+little sort of tool-house in a garden, with a boy about as big as you,
+Fergus, stooping over him.
+
+"'I don't think he's going to die,' the boy said. 'I've made him a bed
+of some hay here in the corner--to-morrow we'll see how he is.'
+
+"Poor Quiver felt very strange and queer and sad. It took him several
+days to get better, and he didn't like the food they gave him, though of
+course they meant to be kind. At last, one day he was able to hop about
+and even to flap his wings a little.
+
+"'Now I shall soon be able to fly home again,' he thought joyfully. 'If
+once I can get to the sea I'll be sure to meet some gulls who can show
+me the way.'
+
+"And when the boy came to look at him, he was pleased to hear himself
+said to be quite well again.
+
+"'We can let him out into the garden now, can't we?' he said to the
+gardener, 'and we'll see if he's such a good slug catcher as you say.'
+
+"'No fear but he's that, sir,' said the gardener. 'But first we must
+clip his wings, else he'd be flying away.'
+
+"And he took Quiver up in his arms, and stretching out his wings, though
+not so as to hurt them, snipped at them with a big sharp pair of
+scissors. Quiver didn't feel it, any more than we feel having our nails
+cut, but he was dreadfully frightened. And he was still all shaking and
+confused when the gardener set him down on the garden path--though he
+got better in a minute and looked about him. It was a pretty garden, and
+he was pleased to be out in the air again, though he felt something
+strange in it, for he had never before been away from the sea. And he
+ran a few steps just to try his legs, and then turned round meaning to
+say good-bye to the boy and thank him in his sea-gull way for his
+hospitality before starting off. Having done this he stretched his wings
+to fly--but--oh dear, what was the matter? He could not raise himself
+more than a few inches from the ground--wings!--he had none left, and
+with a pitiful cry he rolled over on the ground in misery and despair.
+
+"'Poor bird!' said the boy; 'you shouldn't have clipped his wings,
+Barnes. It would have been better to let him fly away.'
+
+"'He'd never have got to his home; he's too young a bird to fly so far.
+And he'll be uncommon good for the slugs, you'll see, sir.'
+
+"So all the summer poor Quiver spent in the garden. He got more used to
+it after a while, but still he had always a pain at his heart. He used
+to rush along the paths as if he was in a desperate hurry and eager to
+get to the end, and then he would just rush back again. It was the only
+way he could keep down his impatience and his longing for the sea. He
+used to pretend to himself that when he got to the end of the path he
+would feel the salt air and see the waves dancing; but the children of
+the house, who of course didn't understand his thoughts, used to laugh
+at him and call him 'that absurd creature.' But his heart was too sore
+for him to mind, and even catching slugs was very little consolation to
+him.
+
+"And so Quiver lived all through the summer and the autumn till the
+winter came round again, and all this time whenever his wings began to
+grow longer, Barnes snipped them short again. I don't think there ever
+was a bird so severely punished for discontent and impatience.
+
+"The winter was a dreadfully cold one; there was frost for such a long
+time that nothing seemed alive at all--there was not a worm or a slug or
+an insect of any kind in the garden. The little boy and his brothers and
+sisters all went away when it began to get so cold, but before they
+went, they told Barnes that he must not leave Quiver out in the garden;
+he must be shut up for the winter in the large poultry house with the
+cocks and hens.
+
+"'For there's nothing for him to eat outside, and you might forget to
+feed him, you know,' the children said.
+
+"So Quiver passed the winter safely, though sadly enough. He had plenty
+to eat, and no one teased or ill-used him, but he used sometimes almost
+to _choke_ with his longing for freedom and for the fresh air--above
+all, the air of the sea. He did not know how long winter lasted; he was
+still a young bird, but he often felt as if he would die if he were kept
+a prisoner much longer. But he had to bear it, and he didn't die, and he
+grew at last so patient that no one would have thought he was the same
+discontented bird. There was a little yard covered over with netting
+outside the hen-house, and Quiver could see the sky from there; and the
+clouds scudding along when it was a windy day reminded him a little of
+the waves he feared he would never see again; and the stupid, peaceful
+cocks and hens used to wonder what he found to stare up at for hours
+together. _They_ thought by far the most interesting thing in life was
+to poke about on the ground for the corn that was thrown out to them.
+
+"At last--at last--came the spring. It came by little bits at a time of
+course, and Quiver couldn't understand what made everything feel so
+different, and why the sky looked blue again, till one day the
+gardener's wife, who managed the poultry, opened the door of the covered
+yard and let them all out, and Quiver, being thinner and quicker than
+the hens, slipped past her and got out into the garden. She saw him when
+he had got there, but she thought it was all right--he might begin his
+slug-catching again. And he hurried along the path in his old way,
+feeling thankful to be free, but with the longing at his heart, stronger
+than ever. It was so long since he had tried to fly in the least that he
+had forgotten almost that he had wings, and he just went hurrying along
+on his legs. All of a sudden something startled him--a noise in the
+trees or something like that--and without thinking what he was doing, he
+stretched his wings in the old way. But fancy his surprise; instead of
+flopping and lopping about as they had done for so long, ever since
+Barnes had cut them, they stood out firm and steady, quite able to
+support his weight; he tried them again, and then again, and--it was no
+mistake--up he soared, up, up, up, into the clear spring sky, strong and
+free and fearless, for his wings had grown again! That was what they had
+been doing all the long dull winter; so happiness came to poor Quiver at
+last, when he had learnt to wait."
+
+"And did he fly home?" asked Fergus breathlessly; "did he find his
+father and mother and the others in the old nest among the rocks?"
+
+"Yes," replied Gratian, after a moment's consideration, "he met some
+gulls on his way to the sea, who told him exactly how to go. And he did
+find them all at home. You know, generally, bird families don't stay so
+long together, but these gulls had been so unhappy about Quiver that
+they had fixed to stay close to the old ones till he came back. They
+always kept on hoping he would come back."
+
+"I am so glad," said Fergus with a sigh of relief. "How beautiful it
+must have been to feel the sea-wind again, and see the waves dancing in
+the sunshine! Do you know, Gratian, I was just a little afraid at the
+end that you were going to say that Quiver had grown so good that he
+went 'up, up, up,' straight into heaven. I shouldn't have liked that--at
+least not till he had lived happily by the sea first. And then," Fergus
+began to get a little confused, "I don't know about that. _Do_ gulls go
+to heaven, mother? You don't mind my thinking dogs do."
+
+The lady smiled. She had not said anything yet; she seemed to be
+thinking seriously. But now she drew Gratian to her and kissed his
+forehead.
+
+"Thank you, dear boy," she said. "I am so glad to have heard one of your
+stories."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+DRAWN TWO WAYS
+
+  "When Love wants this, and Pain wants that,
+  And all our hearts want Tit for Tat."
+
+  MATTHEW BROWNE
+
+
+Gratian almost danced along the moor path on his way home that evening;
+he felt so happy. Never had he loved Fergus and his mother so much--he
+could not now understand how he had ever lived without them, and like a
+child he did not think of how he ever _could_ do so. He let the future
+take care of itself.
+
+It was cold of course. He rather fancied that White-wings was not far
+off, and once or twice he stood still to listen. It was some little time
+now since he had heard anything of his friends. But at first nothing met
+his ear, and he ran on.
+
+Suddenly a breath--a waft rather of soft air blew over his face. It was
+not White-wings, and most certainly not Gray-wings. Gratian looked up
+in surprise--he could hardly expect the soft western sister on such a
+cold night.
+
+"Yes, it is I," she said; "you can hardly believe it, can you? I am only
+passing by--no one else will know I have been here. I don't generally
+come when you are in such merry spirits--I don't feel that you need me
+then. But as I was not so very far off, I thought I'd give you a kiss on
+my way. So you told them the sea-gull's story--I am glad they liked it."
+
+"Yes," said Gratian, "they did, indeed. But, Green-wings, I'm glad
+you've come, for I wanted to ask you, if they ask me if I made it all up
+myself, what can I say? I'm so afraid of telling what isn't true; but
+you know I couldn't explain about you and the others. I couldn't if I
+tried."
+
+"You are not meant to do so," replied she quickly. "What have you said
+when Fergus has asked you about other stories?"
+
+"I have said I couldn't explain how I knew them--that sometimes they
+were a sort of dream. I didn't want to say I had made them all myself,
+though I have _partly_ made them--you know I have, Green-wings."
+
+"Certainly--it was not I for instance, who told you the very remarkable
+fact of natural history that you related at the end of the story?" said
+Green-wings with her soft laugh. "You may quite take the credit of that.
+But I won't laugh at you, dear. It is true that they are your stories,
+and yet a sort of dream. No one but you could hear them--no one would
+say that the whispers of the wind talking language to you, are anything
+but the reflection of your own pretty fancies. It will be all right--you
+will see. But I must go," and she gave a little sigh.
+
+"Green-wings, darling, you seem a little sad to-night," said Gratian.
+"Why is it? Is it that the winter has come?"
+
+"I am never very merry, as you know. But I am a little sadder than usual
+to-night. I foresee--I foresee sorrows"--and her voice breathed out the
+words with such an exquisite plaintiveness that they sounded like the
+dying away notes of a dirge. "But keep up your heart, my darling, and
+trust us all--all four. We only wish your good, though we may show it in
+different ways. And wherever I am I can always be with you to comfort
+you, if it be but for a moment. No distance can separate us from our
+child."
+
+"And I am most _your_ child, am I not, dear Green-wings?" asked Gratian.
+"I knew you the first, and I think I love you the most."
+
+"My darling, good-night," whispered Green-wings, and with a soft flutter
+she was gone.
+
+There was no mother waiting at the open door for Gratian's return that
+evening.
+
+"It is too cold for standing outside now," he said to himself as he went
+in, adding aloud, "Here I am, mother. Did you think I was late?"
+
+Mrs. Conyfer was sitting by the fire. Her knitting lay on her knee, but
+her hands were idle. She looked up as Gratian came in.
+
+"I am glad you have come, dear," she said; but her voice sounded tired,
+and when he was close to her he saw that her face seemed tired also.
+
+[Illustration: "Are you not well, mother?" he said gently.]
+
+"Are you not well, mother?" he said gently.
+
+Mrs. Conyfer looked a little surprised but pleased too. It was new to
+her either to think of how she was or to be asked about it. For though
+her husband was kind and good, he was plain and even a little rough, as
+are the moorland people in general. Gratian had never been rough, but he
+had not had the habit of much noticing those about him. Since he had
+been so often with Fergus and the lady he had learnt to be more
+observant of others, especially of his mother, and more tender in his
+manner.
+
+"Are you not well, mother dear?" he repeated.
+
+"I'm only a bit tired, my boy," she said. "I'm getting old, I suppose,
+and I've worked pretty hard in my way--not to say as if I'd been a poor
+man's wife of course, but a farmer's wife has a deal on her mind."
+
+"And you do everything so well, mother," said Gratian admiringly. "I'm
+getting old enough now to see how different things are here from what
+they are in many houses. Fergus does so like to hear about the dairy and
+the cocks and hens, and about the girdle cakes and all the nice things
+you make."
+
+"He's really a nice little gentleman!" said Mrs. Conyfer, well pleased,
+"I _am_ glad to hear he's getting so much better. I'm sure his mother
+deserves he should--such a sweet lady as she is."
+
+For now and then on a Sunday the two boys' mothers had spoken to each
+other.
+
+"Yes, he's _much_ better," said Gratian. "To-day he walked six times up
+and down the terrace with only my arm."
+
+"They weren't afraid to let him out, and it so cold to-day?" said Mrs.
+Conyfer.
+
+"It wasn't so very cold--you usedn't to mind the cold, mother," said the
+boy.
+
+"Maybe not so much as now," she replied. "I think I'm getting rheumatic
+like my father and mother before me, for I can't move about so quick,
+and then one feels the cold more."
+
+"What makes people have rheumatics?" asked Gratian.
+
+"Folk don't have it so much hereabout," his mother answered; "but I
+don't belong to the moor country, you know. My home was some way from
+this, down in the valley, where it's milder but much damper--and damp is
+worst of anything for rheumatism. Dear me, I remember my old grandmother
+a perfect sight with it--all doubled up--you wondered how she got about.
+But she was a marvel of patience, and so cheery too. I only hope I shall
+be like her in that, if I live so long, for it's a sore trial to an
+active nature to become so nearly helpless."
+
+"Had she nobody to be kind to her when she got so ill?" asked Gratian.
+
+"Oh yes; her children were all good to her, so far as they could be. But
+they were all married and about in the world, and busy with their own
+families. She was a good deal alone, poor old grandmother."
+
+"Mother," said Gratian quickly. "If you ever got to be like that, I
+would never marry or go about in the world. I'd stay at home to be a
+comfort to you. I'd run all your messages and do everything I could for
+you. Mother, I wish you'd let me be more use to you now already, even
+though you're not so ill."
+
+Mrs. Conyfer smiled, but there was more pleasure than amusement in her
+smile.
+
+"I do think being at the Big House has done you good, Gratian. You never
+used to notice or think of things so much before you went there," she
+said. "And you're getting very handy, there's no doubt. I hope I shall
+never be so laid aside, but I'm sure you'd do your best, my dear. Now I
+think I shall go to bed, and you must be off too. Father's out still--he
+and Jonas have so much to see to these cold nights, seeing that all the
+creatures are warm and sheltered. There's snow not far off, they were
+saying. The wind's in the north."
+
+Gratian's dreams were very grotesque that night. He dreamt that his
+mother was turned into a sea-gull, all except her face, which remained
+the same. And she could neither walk nor fly, she was so lame and
+stiff, or else it was that her wings were cut--he was not sure which.
+Then he heard Green-wings's voice saying, "She only wants a sight of the
+sea to make her well. Gratian, you should take her to the sea; call the
+cocks and hens to help you;" and with that he thought he opened his eyes
+and found himself on the terrace where he had been walking with Fergus,
+and there was a beautiful little carriage drawn by about a dozen cocks
+and hens; but when he would have got in, Fergus seemed to push him back,
+saying, "Not yet, not yet, your mother first," and Fergus kept looking
+for Mrs. Conyfer as if he did not know that she was the poor sea-gull,
+standing there looking very funny with the little red knitted shawl on
+that Gratian's mother wore when it was a chilly morning. And just then
+there came flying down from above, Gratian's four friends. Nobody seemed
+to see them but himself, and the cocks and hens began making such a
+noise that he felt quite confused.
+
+"Oh, do take poor mother," he called out--for there was no use trying to
+make any one else understand--"Green-wings and all of you, do take poor
+mother."
+
+"Not without you, Gratian," replied Gray-wings's sharp voice. "It's your
+place to look after your mother," and as she spoke she stooped towards
+him and he felt her cold breath, and with the start it gave him he
+awoke.
+
+The door of his room had blown open, and the window was rattling, and
+the clothes had slipped off on one side. No wonder he had dreamt he was
+cold. He covered himself up again and went to sleep.
+
+Mrs. Conyfer was up as usual the next morning. She said she was better,
+but she limped a little as she walked, and Gratian did not like to see
+it, though she assured him it did not hurt her.
+
+"I shall take a rest on Sunday," she said, "and then you may tend me a
+bit, Gratian. He's as handy as a girl," she added, turning to the farmer
+with a smile. And Mr. Conyfer patted his son's head.
+
+"That's right," he said; "always be good to your mother."
+
+"Winter is really coming," thought Gratian, as he ran to school, and he
+glanced up at the sky wondering if snow were at last on the way.
+
+It held off however for some little time yet.
+
+It was on the third day after this that Gratian on his way home was
+rather surprised to meet Mr. Cornelius returning as if from the Farm.
+The school-children knew that the master had been somewhere, for he had
+left the school in charge of one or two of the head boys and his sister,
+who lived with him and taught the girls sewing.
+
+He smiled and nodded at Gratian, but did not speak, and the boy could
+not help wondering if he had been at Four Winds, and why. And as soon as
+he got home he ran eagerly in to ask.
+
+"Has the master been here, mother? What did he come for?" he called out.
+
+His father and mother were both together in the kitchen, talking rather
+earnestly.
+
+His father looked at him as he answered--
+
+"Yes, Gratian," he said, "Mr. Cornelius has been here. He had something
+important to talk to us about. After you have had your tea and done your
+lessons we will tell you."
+
+"I haven't any lessons, father," he replied. "We had time to do them
+this afternoon when the master was out."
+
+So as soon as tea was over he was told what it was.
+
+"Your friends at the Big House," began the farmer, "are leaving soon.
+They daren't stay once it gets really cold. You'll be sorry to lose
+them, my boy?"
+
+Gratian felt a lump rise in his throat, but he tried to answer
+cheerfully.
+
+"Yes, father. They've been so good to me. I knew they'd have to go some
+time, but I tried not to think of it. The lady has taught me so many
+things I never knew before. I'll try not to forget them."
+
+"She has been very good to you, and she wants to be still more. That's
+what Cornelius came about. I don't want to make you vain, Gratian, but
+she thinks, and Cornelius thinks--and they should know--that there's the
+making of something out of the common in you--that, if you are taught
+and trained the right way, you may come to be something a good bit
+higher than a plain moorland farmer."
+
+Gratian listened with wide-opened eyes.
+
+"I know," he said breathlessly, "I've felt it sometimes. I don't rightly
+know what. I'd like to learn--I'd like to----oh, father, I can't say
+what I mean. It's as if there were so many thoughts in me that I can't
+say," and the child leaned his head on his mother's shoulder and burst
+into tears.
+
+The farmer and his wife looked at each other. They were simple
+unlettered folk, but for all that there was something in them that
+"understood."
+
+"My boy, my little Gratian," said the mother, in tones that she but
+seldom used; "don't cry, my dear. Listen to father."
+
+And in a moment or two the child raised his still tearful eyes, and the
+farmer went on.
+
+"It's just that," he said. "It's just because you can't rightly say,
+that we want you to learn. No one can tell as yet what your talent may
+be, or if perhaps it is not, so to speak, but an everyday one after all.
+If so, no harm will be done; for you will be in wise hands, and you will
+come home again to Four Winds and follow in your father's and
+grandfather's steps. But your friends think you should have a better
+chance of learning and seeing for yourself than I can give you here. And
+the lady has written to her husband, and he's quite willing, and so
+it's, so to speak, all settled. You are to go with them when they leave
+here, Gratian, and for a year or so you are to have lessons at home with
+the little boy, who isn't yet strong enough to go to school. And by the
+end of that time it'll be easier to see what you are best fitted for.
+You'll have teaching of all kinds--music and drawing, and all sorts of
+book-learning. It's a handsome offer, there's no denying."
+
+And the tears quite disappeared from Gratian's bright eyes, and his
+whole face glowed with hope and satisfaction.
+
+"I'll do my best, father. I can promise you that. You shall have no call
+to be ashamed of me. It's very good of you and mother to let me go. But
+I shall come home again before very long--I shan't be long without
+seeing you?"
+
+"Oh yes--you shall come home after a while of course. Anyway for a
+visit, and to see how it will be best to do. We're not going to give you
+away altogether, you may be sure," said the farmer with a little attempt
+at a joke.
+
+But the mother did not speak. She kissed the boy as she rarely kissed
+him, and whispered "God bless you, my dear," when she bade him
+good-night.
+
+"I wonder if it's all come of our giving him such an outlandish name!"
+said Mrs. Conyfer with a rather melancholy smile.
+
+And Gratian fell asleep with his mind in a whirl.
+
+"I should like to talk about it to my godmothers," was almost his last
+thought. "I wonder if I shall still see them sometimes when I am far
+from Four Winds."
+
+And the next morning when he woke, he lay looking round his little room
+and thinking how much he liked it, and how happy he had been in it. He
+was beginning to realise that no good is all good, no light without
+shadow.
+
+But there seemed no shadow or drawback of any kind the next day when he
+went to the Big House to talk it all over with the lady and Fergus.
+Fergus was too delighted for words.
+
+"It is like a story in a book, isn't it, Gratian?" he said. "And if you
+turn out a great man, then the world will thank mother and me for having
+found you."
+
+Gratian blushed a little.
+
+"I don't know about being a _great_ man," he said, "but I want to find
+out really what it is I can do best, and then it will be my own fault if
+I don't do _something_ good."
+
+"Yes, my boy--that is exactly what I want you to feel," said Fergus's
+mother.
+
+But Gratian was anxious to know what his four friends had to say about
+it.
+
+"I don't think it's very kind of none of you to come to speak to me,"
+he said aloud on his way home. "I know you're not far off--all of you.
+I'm sure I heard Gray-wings scolding outside last night."
+
+A sound of faint laughter up above him seemed to answer.
+
+"Oh there you are, Gray-wings, I thought as much," he said, buttoning up
+his jacket, for it was very cold. But he had hardly spoken before he
+heard, nearer than the laughter had been, a soft sigh.
+
+"I never forget you--remember, Gratian, whenever you want me--whenever
+in sor--row."
+
+"That's Green-wings," he said to himself. "But why should she talk of
+sorrow when I'm so happy--happier than ever in my life, I think. She
+_is_ of rather too melancholy a nature."
+
+He ran on--the door was latched--he hurried into the kitchen. There was
+no one there.
+
+"Where can mother be?" he thought. He heard steps moving upstairs and
+turned to go there. Halfway up he met Madge, the servant, coming down.
+Her face looked anxious and distressed through all its rosiness.
+
+"Oh the poor missis," she said. "She's had to go to bed. The pains in
+her ankles and knees got so bad--I'm afeared she's going to be really
+very ill."
+
+Gratian ran past her into his mother's room.
+
+"Don't be frightened," Mrs. Conyfer said at once. "It's only that my
+rheumatism is very bad to-day. I'll be better in the morning, dear. I
+must be well with you going away so soon."
+
+And when the farmer came in she met him with the same cheerful tone,
+though it was evident she was suffering severely.
+
+But Gratian sat by her bedside all the evening, doing all he could. He
+was grave and silent, for the thought was deep in his heart--
+
+"I can't go away--I can't and I mustn't if mother is going to be really
+ill. Poor mother! I'm sure my godmothers wouldn't think I should."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+LEARNING TO WAIT
+
+  "If all the beauty in the earth
+    And skies and hearts of men
+  Were gently gathered at its birth,
+    And loved and born again."
+
+  MATTHEW BROWNE
+
+
+But the godmothers seemed to have forgotten him. He went sadly to
+bed--and the tears came to his eyes when he remembered how that very
+evening he had thought of himself as "happier than he had ever been in
+his life." He fell asleep however as one does at nine years old,
+whatever troubles one has, and slept soundly for some hours. Then he was
+awakened by his door opening and some one coming in. It was his father.
+
+"Gratian, wake up. Your mother is very ill I'm afraid. Some one must go
+for the doctor--old Jonas is the nearest. I can't leave her--she seems
+nearly unconscious. Dress yourself as quick as you can, and tell Jonas
+to bring Dr. Spense as soon as possible."
+
+Gratian was up and dressed almost at once. He felt giddy and miserable,
+and yet with a strange feeling over him that he had known it all before.
+He dared not try to think clearly--he dared not face the terrible fear
+at the bottom of his heart. It was his first experience of real trouble.
+
+As he hurried off he met Madge at the door; she too had been wakened up.
+A sudden thought struck him.
+
+"Madge," he said, "if I'm not back quickly, tell father not to be
+frightened. I think I'll go all the way for the doctor myself. It'll
+save time not to go waking old Jonas, and I know he couldn't go as fast
+as I can."
+
+Madge looked admiringly and yet half-anxiously at the boy. He seemed
+such a little fellow to go all that way alone in the dark winter night.
+
+"I daresay you're right," she said, "and yet I'm half-afraid. Hadn't you
+better ask master first?"
+
+Gratian shook his head.
+
+"No, no. It will be all right. Don't trouble him about me unless he
+asks," and off he ran.
+
+He went as quickly as he could find his way--it was not a _very_ dark
+night--till he was fairly out on the moorland path. Then he stood still.
+
+"White-wings, Green-wings--whichever of you hears me, come and help me.
+Dear Green-wings, you said you always would comfort me."
+
+"So she would, surely," said a voice, firmer and colder than hers, but
+kindly too, "but at this moment it's more strength than comfort that you
+want. Hold out your arms, my boy, there--clasp me tight, don't start at
+my cold breath. That's right. Why, I can fly with you as if you were a
+snow-flake!"
+
+And again Gratian felt the strange, whirling, rushing sensation, again
+he closed his eyes as if he were falling asleep, and knew no more till
+he found himself standing in the village street, a few doors from the
+doctor's house, and felt, rather than heard, a clear cold whisper of
+"Farewell, Gratian, for the present."
+
+And the next morning the neighbours spoke of the sudden northern blast
+that had come rushing down from the moors in the night, and wondered it
+had not brought the snow with it, little thinking it had brought a
+little boy instead!
+
+Dr. Spense was soon awakened, and long as the time always seems to an
+anxious watcher by a sick-bed, Farmer Conyfer could scarcely believe his
+ears when he heard the rattle of the dogcart wheels up the steep road,
+or his eyes when the doctor, followed by Gratian, came up the staircase.
+
+"My boy, but you have done bravely!" said the father in amazement.
+"Doctor, I can't understand how he can have been so quick!"
+
+The doctor turned kindly to Gratian.
+
+"Go down, my good child, and warm yourself. I saw the sparkle of a nice
+fire in the kitchen--it is a bitter night. I will keep my promise to
+you; as I go away I'll look in."
+
+For Gratian, though not able to tell much of his mother's illness, had
+begged the doctor to promise to tell him the truth as to what he thought
+of her.
+
+"I'd rather know, sir, I would indeed, even if it's very bad," he had
+said tremblingly.
+
+And as he sat by the kitchen fire waiting, it seemed to him that never
+till now had he in the least understood how he loved his mother.
+
+It was a queer, boisterous night surely. For down the chimney,
+well-built and well-seasoned as it was, there came a sudden swirl of
+wind. But strangely enough it did not make the fire smoke. And Gratian,
+anxious though he was, smiled as a pretty green light seemed suddenly to
+dance among the flames. And he was neither surprised nor startled when a
+soft voice whispered in his ear:
+
+"I am here, my darling. I _would_ come for one moment, though
+White-wings has been trying to blow me away. Keep up your heart--and
+don't lose hope."
+
+And just then the doctor came in.
+
+"My boy," he said, as he stood warming his hands at the blaze, "I will
+tell you the truth. I am afraid your poor mother is going to be ill for
+a good while. She has not taken care of herself. But I have good hopes
+that she will recover. And you may do a good deal. I see you are
+sensible, and handy, I am sure. You must be instead of a daughter to her
+for a while--it will be hard on your father, and you may be of great
+help."
+
+Gratian thanked him, with the tears, which would not now be kept back,
+in his eyes. And promising to come again that same day, for it was now
+past midnight, the doctor went away.
+
+Some days passed--the fever was high at first, and poor Mrs. Conyfer
+suffered much. But almost sooner than the doctor had ventured to hope,
+she began to get a little better. Within a week she was out of danger.
+And then came Fergus's mother again. She had already come to ask for
+news of her little friend's mother, and in the first great anxiety she
+said nothing of the plans that had been made. But now she asked to see
+the farmer, and talked with him some time downstairs while Gratian
+watched by his mother.
+
+"I am so thankful to be better--so very thankful to be better before you
+go, Gratian," said the poor woman.
+
+"Oh yes, dear mother, we cannot be thankful enough," the boy replied. "I
+will never forget that night--the night you were so very ill," he said
+with a shiver at the thought of it.
+
+"I shall not be able to write much to you, my child," she said. "The
+doctor says my hands and joints will be stiff for a good while, but that
+I must try not to fret, and to keep an easy mind. I will try--but it
+won't be easy for me that's always been so stirring. And I shall miss
+you at first, of course. But if you're well and happy--and it would have
+been sad and dull for you here with me so different."
+
+Just then the farmer's voice came sounding up the stairs.
+
+"Gratian," it said, "come down here."
+
+The boy obeyed. But first he stooped and kissed the pale face on the
+pillow.
+
+"Dear mother," he said.
+
+His father was standing by the kitchen fire when he went in, and the
+lady was seated in one of the big old arm-chairs. She looked at him with
+fresh love and interest in her sweet blue eyes.
+
+"Dear Gratian," she said, "Fergus is fretting for you sadly. Your father
+has been telling me what a clever sick-nurse you are. And indeed I was
+sure of it from your way with Fergus. I am so very, very glad your dear
+mother is better."
+
+"She will miss him a good deal at first, I'm afraid," said the farmer,
+"but I must do my best. It's about your going, my boy--the lady has
+already put it off some days for your sake. It's very good of you,
+ma'am--_very_ good. I'll get him ready as well as I can. You'll excuse
+it if his things are not just in such shipshape order as his mother
+would have had them."
+
+"Of course, of course," she replied. "Then the day after to-morrow. I
+_daren't_ wait longer--the doctor says Fergus must not risk more cold as
+yet."
+
+Gratian had listened in silence. But now he turned, first to his father
+and then to the lady, and spoke.
+
+"Father, dear lady," he began, "don't be vexed with me--oh don't. But I
+can't go now. I've thought about it all these days--I'm--I'm
+_dreadfully_ sorry," and here his voice faltered. "I wanted to learn and
+to understand. But it wouldn't be right. I know it wouldn't. Mother
+would not get well so quick without me, perhaps she'd never get well at
+all. And no learning or seeing things would do me really good if I knew
+I wasn't doing right. Father--tell me that you think I'm right."
+
+The lady and the farmer looked at each other; there were tears in the
+lady's eyes.
+
+"Is he right?" asked Gratian's father.
+
+She bent her head.
+
+"I'm afraid he is," she said, "but it is only fair to let him quite
+understand. It isn't merely putting it off for a while, Gratian," she
+went on; "I am afraid it may be for altogether. We are not likely to
+come back to this part of the country again, and my husband, though
+kind, is a little peculiar. He has a nephew whom he will send for as a
+companion to Fergus if you don't come. We should like you better, but it
+is our duty to do something for Jack, and Fergus needs a companion, so
+it seems only natural to take him instead of sending him away to
+school."
+
+"Of course," said the farmer, looking at his son.
+
+"Yes, I understand," said Gratian. "But it doesn't make any difference.
+If I never learnt anything more--of learning, I mean--if I never left
+Four Winds or saw any of the beautiful places and things in the world,
+it _shouldn't_ make any difference. I couldn't ever be happy or--or--do
+anything really good or great," he went on, blushing a little, "if I
+began by doing wrong--could I?"
+
+"He is right," said his father and Fergus's mother together.
+
+And so it was settled.
+
+The person the most difficult to satisfy that he _was_ right was--no,
+not Fergus--sorry as he was he loved his own mother too much not to
+agree--poor Mrs. Conyfer herself, for whom the sacrifice was to be made.
+Gratian had to talk to her for ever so long, to assure her that it was
+for his own sake as well--that he would have been too miserable about
+her to have got any good from his new opportunities. And in the end she
+gave in, and allowed herself to enjoy the comfort of her little boy's
+care and companionship during her long weary time of slow recovery.
+
+Fergus and his mother did not leave a day too soon. With early January
+the winter spirits, chained hitherto, broke forth in fury. Never had
+such falls of snow been known even in that wild region, and many a night
+Gratian, lying awake, unable to sleep through the rattle and racket,
+felt a strange excitement at the thought that all this was the work of
+his mysterious protectors.
+
+"White-wings and Gray-wings seem really going mad," he thought once or
+twice. But the sound of laughter, mingling with the whistling and
+roaring and shrieking in the chimney, reassured him.
+
+"No fear, no fear," he seemed to hear; "we must let our spirits out
+sometimes. But you'd better not go to school for a day or two, small
+Gratian, all the same."
+
+And several "days or two" that winter it was impossible for him to go to
+school, or for any one to come to the Farm, so heavy and dark even at
+mid-day were the storm-clouds, so deep lay the treacherous snow-drifts.
+Not even the doctor could reach them. But fortunately Mrs. Conyfer was
+by this time much better. All she now required was care and rest.
+
+"Oh, mother dear, how glad I am that I did not leave you!" Gratian would
+often say. "How dull and dreary and long the days would have seemed! You
+couldn't even have got letters from me."
+
+And the lessons he learnt in that winter of patient waiting, of quiet
+watching and self-forgetfulness, bore their fruit.
+
+And his four friends did not forget him. There came now and then a soft
+breath from the two gentle sisters whose voices were hushed to all
+others for a time, and more than once in some mysterious way Gratian
+felt himself summoned out to the lonely moorland by the two whose
+carnival time it was.
+
+And standing out there with the great sweep of open country all around
+him, with his hair tossed by White-wings's giant touch, or his cheeks
+tingling with a sharp blast from mischievous Gray-wings, Gratian laughed
+with pleasure and daring enjoyment.
+
+"I am your child too--Spirits of the North and East. You can't frighten
+me. I defy you."
+
+And the two laughed and shouted with wild glee at their foster-child's
+great spirit.
+
+"He does us credit," they cried, though old Jonas passing by heard
+nothing but a shriek of fresh fury up above, and shouted to Gratian to
+hasten within shelter.
+
+But winter never lasts for ever. Spring came again--slow and
+reluctant--and it was long before Gray-wings consented to take her
+yearly nap and let her sister of the west soothe and comfort the
+storm-tossed country. And then, as day by day Gratian made his way to
+school, he watched with awakened and ever-awaking eyes the exquisite
+eternal beauty of the summer's gradual approach, till at last
+Golden-wings clasped him in her arms one morning and told him her joy at
+being able to return.
+
+"For I love this country, though no one will believe it," she said. "The
+scent of the gorse and the heather is delicious and refreshing after the
+strong spice perfumes of my own home;" and many a story she told the
+child, and many a song she sang to him through the long summer
+days--which he loved to spend in his old way, out among the heather with
+Jonas and Watch and the browsing sheep.
+
+For the holidays had begun. His mother was well, quite well, by now,
+and Gratian was free to do as he chose.
+
+He was out on the moors one day--a lovely cloudless day, that would have
+been sultry anywhere else--when old Jonas startled him by saying
+suddenly:
+
+"Did you know, Master Gratian, that the gentry's come back to the Big
+House?"
+
+Gratian sat straight up in his astonishment.
+
+"No, Jonas. How did you hear it?"
+
+"Down in the village, quite sudden-like. It was all got ready for them
+last week, but there's been none of us down there much lately."
+
+Gratian felt too excited to lie still and dream any more.
+
+[Illustration: It was Fergus, little lame Fergus, mounted on a tiny
+rough-coated pony, coming towards him!]
+
+"I'll ask mother if I may go and see," he said jumping up. And off he
+ran. But an unexpected sight met him at a stone's throw from the Farm.
+It was Fergus, little lame Fergus, mounted on a tiny rough-coated pony,
+coming towards him! And the joy of the meeting who could describe?
+
+"We tried to keep it a secret till it was quite sure," said the boy.
+"There was some difficulty about it, but it is all settled now. Father
+has taken the Big House from our cousin, and we are to live at it half
+the year. We are all there--my sisters--and my big brother comes
+sometimes--and mother of course. All except Jack. Jack has gone to sea.
+He was very nice, but he hated lessons--he only wanted to go to sea. So
+we want you now, Gratian--my own Gratian. I have a tutor, and you are to
+learn with me all the summer and to go away with us in the winter now
+your mother is well, so that you will find out what you want to be. It
+is for me we have come here. I must always be lame, Gratian. The doctors
+can't cure me," and the bright voice faltered. "But I shall get strong
+all the same if I live here in this beautiful air. And I shall be very
+happy, for I can learn to play on the organ--and that makes up for all."
+
+And all came about as Fergus said.
+
+The summer and the autumn that followed, Gratian studied with his
+friend's tutor. And the winter after, greatly to his mother's joy, he
+went away as had been planned before. But not for ever of course. No
+great length of time passed without his returning to his birthplace.
+
+"I should die," he said sometimes, "if I could not from time to time
+stand at the old porch and feel the breath of the four winds about me."
+
+This is only the story of the very opening of the life of a boy who
+lived to make his mark among men. How he did so, how he found his voice,
+it is not for me to tell. But he had early learnt to choose the right,
+and so we know he prospered.
+
+Besides--was he not the godchild of the Four Winds of Heaven?
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+Mr. A. C. SWINBURNE, in _The Nineteenth Century_, writes:--
+
+      "It seems to me not at all easier to draw a lifelike child than to
+      draw a lifelike man or woman: Shakespeare and Webster were the
+      only two men of their age who could do it with perfect delicacy
+      and success: at least, if there was another who could, I must
+      crave pardon of his happy memory for my forgetfulness or ignorance
+      of his name. Our own age is more fortunate, on this single score
+      at least, having a larger and far nobler proportion of female
+      writers; among whom, since the death of George Eliot, there is
+      none left whose touch is so exquisite and masterly, whose love is
+      so thoroughly according to knowledge, whose bright and sweet
+      invention is so fruitful, so truthful, or so delightful as Mrs.
+      Molesworth's. Any chapter of _The Cuckoo Clock_ or the enchanting
+      _Adventures of Herr Baby_ is worth a shoal of the very best novels
+      dealing with the characters and fortunes of mere adults."
+
+MRS. MOLESWORTH'S
+STORY BOOKS FOR CHILDREN.
+
+With Illustrations by WALTER CRANE.
+
+_In Crown 8vo. Price 4s. 6d. each._
+
+  FOUR WINDS FARM.
+  "US:" An Old-Fashioned Story.
+  CHRISTMAS TREE LAND.
+  TWO LITTLE WAIFS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_In Globe 8vo. 2s. 6d. each._
+
+  TELL ME A STORY.
+  THE TAPESTRY ROOM: A Child's Romance.
+  A CHRISTMAS CHILD: A Sketch of Boy Life.
+  GRANDMOTHER DEAR.
+  ROSY.
+  "CARROTS," Just a Little Boy.
+  THE CUCKOO CLOCK.
+  THE ADVENTURES OF HERR BABY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  SUMMER STORIES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 4s. 6d.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+MACMILLAN'S STORY BOOKS
+FOR CHILDREN.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_In Globe 8vo. 2s. 6d. each._
+
+=Our Year.= By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman."
+
+=Little Sunshine's Holiday.= By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman."
+
+=When I was a Little Girl.= By the Author of "St. Olave's."
+
+=Nine Years Old.= By the Author of "When I was a Little Girl," etc.
+
+=A Storehouse of Stories.= Edited by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 2 Vols.
+
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+
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+Patteson for the Young.) With a Preface by CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.
+
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+
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+KEARY.
+
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+
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+
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+W. J. HENNESSY.
+
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+
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+With Illustrations by Mrs. ALMA TADEMA.
+
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+by W. J. HENNESSY.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
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+
+
+
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+
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+of Trinity College, Cambridge. Globe 8vo. 4s. 6d.
+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
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+
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+
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+
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+Illustrated.
+
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+
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+
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+
+  The Heir of Redclyffe.
+  Heartsease.
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+  Pillars of the House. 2 Vols.
+  The Clever Woman of the Family.
+  Magnum Bonum.
+  Unknown to History.
+  Stray Pearls.
+  The Armourer's 'Prentices.
+  Dynevor Terrace.
+  The Young Stepmother.
+  The Trial.
+  My Young Alcides.
+  The Three Brides.
+  The Caged Lion.
+  The Dove in the Eagle's Nest.
+  Love and Life.
+  The Chaplet of Pearls.
+  Lady Hester and the Danvers Papers.
+  The Two Sides of the Shield.
+  Nuttie's Father.
+
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+
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+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Winds Farm, by Mrs. Molesworth
+
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