mortals. Mark held the girl in his arms, and when he lowered his head to console her their lips met. Her kiss was sharp and sweet as the scent of rosemary; her slim body quivered in his embrace like a sapling grasped to stay the headlong descent of a wooded mountain path. And if his creed was an illusion?

He held her more closely strained to him. Her cheeks were warm and velvety as peaches in the sun.

Here at least was the assurance of immortality if by this girl he could have a child. Each year he should see it grow, as it were from the very soil of this land.

The girl wanted to give herself to him. Was he to make of this natural attraction a morbid and monkish temptation? How close she was clinging to him! How close... how close . . . he should be mad to refuse this knowledge without which he should be for ever discontented.

He

And if all that he ever believed was a dream? Why should he sacrifice to-night for a dream? had a right to love. He had in such place at such a time with such a maid a duty to love.

At this moment the first bomb burst above them in a shower of red stars, lighting the gorge to the likeness of a chasm in hell.

"Venite, venite!" Mark cried.

And he pulled her back up the mountain to watch the fireworks.

She did not leave his side all that night, and they sat waiting for the dawn on the crowded peak of the mountain. She did not seem resentful at the way he had treated her. She sat there in seeming content, her hand clasped in his; and for an hour before dawn she slept with her head upon his shoulder. The green dawn came; and with the green dawn came Don Tommaso panting up the mountain followed by a black trail of pious but unadventurous souls who had preferred to sleep in their beds to spending the night under the moon.

Mass in the little chapel was packed. Yet, in spite of having to stand upright all the time in the crush, Mark was able to concentrate upon the miracle of God upon the altar as devoutly as ever in his life. At the Elevation,

instead of the sacring-bell's jingling its summons to adore the Host, a dozen grenades were exploded immediately outside the open west door to the great comfort and devotion of the faithful. It was what foolish and sanctimonious Northerners call a thoroughly pagan service, and just because it was so essentially the genius of the place it healed Mark's discontent. The image of Minerva, the fragments of tesselated pavement where that long dead Roman sat, the slim roe-eyed girl still beside him, the very sirens of this haunted peninsula were all incorporate within this sun-dyed Mass upon the mountain-top. And did not she whose birthday they were celebrating say to her Son, They have no wine? Was not this the best day of all to thank God for the vintage?

Mark decided to let that feast be the culmination of his stay in Crapano. There might not be a red-starred bomb the next time that it was wanted. Besides, he ought not to miss the opportunity of getting to know a little more about Rome.

A fortnight later he returned to England in a mood of serene hope and set out forthwith to Nancepean.

CHAPTER XXII

STARS

MARK was seized with a sudden shyness at the prospect of appearing before the people of Nancepean as their Vicar. He began to feel too much like a prophet in his own country. It was a pity that there was no way of avoiding the formal induction; but he felt that he should bear up under it more happily if he could slip into the place beforehand, so that the pompous ceremony might appear just the joke that it really was. With this idea

in his mind he travelled down to Rosemarket without giving any notice of his arrival, and, leaving his luggage in the cloak-room of the station and cramming a few things into a knapsack, he set out to walk the five miles to Nancepean. He did not even take the great main road to Rose Head as far as where the narrow by-road turned off sharp to the right down to Nancepean; but he picked out the most devious route behind Rose Pool, where, in the shadow and silence of deep lanes overhung by wild cherries, he wandered by paths greatly beloved in youth; and about seven o'clock of a golden September evening he reached the outskirts of the village.

Nancepean had not changed much outwardly in twenty years. There was a new and hideous building on the left just beyond the parish hall. The parish hall was not beautiful, but that sanctimonious ark was really horrible with its dressed and pointed granite blocks and its arched windows all out of proportion to the rest of the design. It must be a new conventicle, and a much more pretentious affair than the room in old Hockin's cottage which had served the Wesleyans in the time of his grandfather. This was likely to be a serious rival to a church nearly two miles away up one steep hill and down another. Such a temple would probably have a minister all to itself and not be dependent upon tea-swilling carpet-baggers. And beyond

the chapel two wedding-cake villas had been built with long front gardens, each of which resembled a dog's cemetery and had one of those ash heaps that people call rockeries. What a crime to have hidden the old apple orchard with such a pair! No, the orchard had vanished altogether. No more Sops-in-wine and Tom Putts and... but the rest of the old names of the apples eluded his memory. However, that was almost the whole tale of external change. And the people? Why, surely that was old Miss Lassiter stumping along with the help of the same crooked stick to fetch her water from the pump. The old witch had not altered by a wrinkle in twenty years. Did she still brood over her brass candlesticks and gaily painted bellows, for which so many visitors were reputed to have offered her such vast sums if she would only sell them? Or was she still the crafty old maid who knew better than to sell them for only a fraction of what they were really worth? And did she still delight in making and unmaking those wills that had been the subject of so much village gossip twenty years ago? And were her relatives still waiting anxiously to know which would have the best candlestick and which the second best and which the hoard of gold? Or had she outlived them all?

But old Miss Lassiter was the only one that Mark recognized among the two or three people he saw in the roadway, and he decided to postpone any further exploration of the village that night and go straight to the Hanover Inn to secure his night's lodging. Mark walked along the quarter of a mile that brought him to the Hanover Inn, looking the same as it had always looked, a square whitewashed house with the signpost of a bagwigged George swaying gently in the evening breeze. He read the name of the licensee above the door. William John Evans, licensed to sell beer, spirits and tobacco. Evans? The name was unfamiliar in Nancepean. Then old man Timbury must be dead, and there would be another sexton. Perhaps it was as well, Mark thought, remembering with a smile his first encounter with that veteran of the Crimea.

William John Evans was a rubicund, genial fellow in the prime of life, very proud of being the landlord of the

Hanover Inn, and not less proud of being a Roseford man, which he had no doubt whatever was as much finer a place to be born in than Nancepean as Nancepean was finer than anywhere else. He had only held a licence here for three years, and there had been two other landlords between him and Timbury. As soon as Mark revealed who he was, he expressed the greatest satisfaction, for not only had he the keys of the church and those of the vicarage hanging at this very moment on the wall of their parlour, but his arrival was going to give very particular pleasure to Mrs. Evans, who only this morning at dinner had been wondering why they had heard nothing further about the new vicar, and hoping very much that he was going to be in time to hold the Harvest Home and thereby put some of their noses out of joint down to the chapel.

"Ess, ess, you've come to the very place as you ought to have come first, I believe," Mr. Evans declared. "And my missus is going to be brim pleased about it. I do knaw that. That's a sure thing, that is. The only thing as is likely to get her a bit hurried is cooking you a good dinner to-night. 'Tis too late to kill a chicken now, and that's going to hurry her a lot, that is. Only last week she said, William John,' she said to me, don't you go wringing that cockerel's neck, or I'll wring yours. That's for the first time the new vicar do come here along to supper with us.' 'I don't want to wring his neck, darn'ee,' I said. 'No, and you'd better look you don't, William John.''

"Is Mrs. Evans in now?”

"Oh, she's in right enough, but 'twould be better if I was to lev her knaw you're here. She've been washing up the clomb, and I don't believe as she'd be best pleased if I was to take 'ee out to her without giving her a minute to make herself fitty. What with so many visitors and all, she've had a good deal to do this summer. So, if you'd come and sit awhile in the parlour, she'll come in to shake hands. Will you take something to drink?" “I'll have a Guinness," Mark said.

"You're not a teetotaller, then?" Mr. Evans asked, his blue eyes twinkling rapidly.