to the sound only of the waves that curved
round Battery Point and tumbled on the beach below. And I know that,
one summer evening, when the scandalised townsmen and their wedded
wives assembled, and marched down to the cottage with intent to lead
the woman in a "Ramriding," the sight of Kit playing in the garden,
and his look of innocent delight as he ran in to call his mother out,
took the courage out of them and sent them home, up the hill, like
sheep.

Of course the truth must have come to him soon. But it never did:
for when he was just five, the woman took a chill and died in a week.
She had left a little money; and the Vicar, rather than let Kit go to
the workhouse, spent it to buy the child admission to an Orphanage in
the Midlands, a hundred miles away.

So Kit hung the rose-tree with little scraps of crape, and was put,
dazed and white, into a train and whisked a hundred miles off. And
everybody forgot him.

Kit spent two years at the Orphanage in an antique, preposterous
suit--snuff-coloured coat with lappels, canary waistcoat, and
corduroy small-clothes. And they gave him his meals regularly.
There were ninety-nine other boys who all throve on the food: but Kit
pined. And the ninety-nine, being full of food, made a racket at
times; but Kit found it quiet--deathly quiet; and his eyes wore a
listening look.

For the truth was, he missed the noise of the beach, and was
listening for it. And deep down in his small heart the sea was
piping and calling to him. And the world had grown dumb; and he
yearned always: until they had to get him a new canary waistcoat, for
the old one had grown too big.

At night, from his dormitory window, he could see a rosy light in the
sky. At first he thought this must be a pillar of fire put there to
guide him home; but it was only the glare of furnaces in a
manufacturing town, not far away. When he found this out his heart
came near to break; and afterwards he pined still faster.

One evening a lecture was given in the dining-room of the Orphanage.
The subject was "The Holy Land," and the lecturer illustrated it with
views from the magic-lantern.

Kit, who sat in one of the back rows, was moderately excited at
first. But the views of barren hills, and sands, and ruins, and
palm-trees, and cedars, wearied him after a while. He had closed his
eyes, and the lecturer's voice became a sing-song in which his heart
searched, as it always searched, for the music of