nds just below
the Point, we were happy, paddling and enjoying ourselves till the
sunset told us that we must begin our herculean labour of hoisting
the leg and crutches up the gangway back to the wood. I have
performed many athletic feats since my cure, but nothing comparable
to the feat of climbing with crutches up those paths of yielding
sand. Once we found on the sand a newly shot gull. She took it in her
lap and mourned over it. I guessed who was the poor bird's
murderer--her father!

We knew Nature in all her moods. In every aspect we found the sea,
the wood, and the meadows happy and beautiful--in winter as in
summer, in storm as in sunshine. In the foggy days of November, in
the sharp winds of March, in the snows and sleet and rain of
February, we used to hear other people complain of the bad weather;
we used to hear them fret for change. But we despised them for their
ignorance where we were so learned. There was no bad weather for us.
In March, what so delicious as breasting together the brave wind, and
feeling it tingle our cheeks and beat our ears till we laughed at
each other with joy? In rain, what so delicious as to stand under a
tree or behind a hedge and listen to the drops pattering overhead
among the leaves, and see the fields steaming up to meet them? Then
again the soft falling of snow upon the lonely fields, while the very
sheep looked brown against the whiteness gathering round them. All
beautiful to us two, and beloved!

VI

'But where was this little boy's mother all this time?' you naturally
ask; 'where was his father? In a word, who was he? and what were his
surroundings?'

I will answer these queries in as brief a fashion as possible.

My father, Philip Aylwin, belonged to a branch of an ancient family
which had been satirically named by another branch of the same family
'The Proud Aylwins.'

It is a singular thing that it was the proud Aylwins who had a
considerable strain of Gypsy blood in their veins. My great-grandfather
had married Fenella Stanley, the famous Gypsy beauty, about whom so
much was written in the newspapers and magazines of that period. She
had previously when a girl of sixteen married a Lovell who died and
left a child. Fenella's portrait in the character of the Sibyl of
Snowdon was painted by the great portrait painter of that time.

This picture still hangs in the portrait gallery of Raxton Hall.

As a child it had an immense attraction for me, and no wond