slowly up the hill, skirting the steep side
of a coombe that gathered the dusk in its huge green bowl until it
brimmed with mystery.

Boy looked down into it and longed, as often before, that she had wings
on which to float upon that soft and undulating sea of shadow.

Not seldom this desire was so strong upon her that she felt a certainty
she _had_ wings, wings within her which she could not spread, but of the
existence of which this insurgent desire was the irrefragable witness.

The sides of the coombe were hung with beeches sheathed now in tenderest
green; while from out of the emptiness beneath, the insistent and
melancholy cry of lambs seemed to make the shadows quiver and touched a
chord of wistfulness in the heart of the girl.

The sun was already sinking behind the smooth ramparts of the hills and
rose to meet them as they climbed, peering at them over the summit
through the shaggy eyebrow of the gorse.

Boy walked beside the old mare, throwing every now and then swift and
surreptitious glances at her new treasure. She was fearful lest the
young man leading his pony on the foot-track at her side should think
her a baby and over-keen.

Once only he spoke to her, and that clearly with the difficulty of the
shy.

"What shall you cuc-call her?" he asked.

"I don't know," she answered.

She longed to help him, but when the chance came she could only snub
him. That was always the way with Boy, when she was in touch with
somebody she liked.

Old Mat came unconsciously to the rescue.

"Why, Four Pound, o' course," he panted, labouring up the hill, his
hands on his knees.

"Is she Black Death blood?" asked the young man.

"Yes, she's Black Death all right," answered the old man. "That's the
old Pocahontas strain. Jumpers to a gee. You know. Look at them gray
hairs at the root of her tail--and that lazy, too! sluttin' along with
her nose out and her tongue a-waggin'. They're all like that, Black
Deaths are. If you was to let off a bomb under her belly, she wouldn't
so much as switch her tail. Couldn't be bothered. Constitutions like
hoxes, too." He paused to pant. "If what that feller said was O.K., why
then she's worth money, too. Only o' course it ain't. Else he wouldn't
ha' said it."

On the top of the Downs, facing the wind that blew straight from the sun
sinking over Newhaven into the sea, they paused to breathe. Beneath
them stretched the Weald, and the great saucer of Pevensey Bay ringed
about w