gh the opening. It was a great, flat roof, separated from the
next ones by low copings of stone work, flat topped and about two feet
high. The town, as she climbed out and stood on the roof, lay beneath
her like a plan. People looked like flies in the streets, the tramcars
like accelerated caterpillars. The water of the harbour was still and
smooth and as incredibly blue as the water she had seen Mrs. King using
in her laundry work that morning. Wharves or trees ran right down into
the blueness. The big ships lying at anchor made her heart beat fast
with their clean beauty and romance; the bare, clean roofs running along
for perhaps fifty houses gave her a breath of freedom that brought back
Lashnagar and Ben Grief. She thought, with a pang of pity, about Louis,
the product of suburban London, chained to streets and houses almost all
his boyhood, knowing nothing of the scourge of the winds, the courage of
wide, high places. She tumbled down the ladder, her eyes bright.

"Louis--Oh Louis, come up on the roof! It's perfectly beautiful! I've
been so worried about you shut up here like this, and I've felt so
choked myself with this one room. But up there I'll make you shut your
eyes, and I'll tell you all about Ben Grief, and you'll think you're
there. I'll make you hear the curlews and the gulls and see Jock and
Tammas come in with the boats."

"But on the roof!" he protested. "Whatever next?"

"Oh, come and see. You'll love it," she urged and, though he said it was
"a beastly fag," she got him at last into his dressing-gown and slippers
and sitting beside her on the coping.

She was happier than she had been for months; she felt that there was
enough breath up here for her, and not even his laughing at her for
being "such a kid" could damp her enjoyment. Presently a new idea
occurred to her.

"Let's sleep up here!" she cried, and once again over-ruled his
objections, and dragged up the mattress and blankets.

The shadows of the chimneys were long across the roofs as she laid the
mattress down by the coping. The day had been hot with the clear, bright
heat of early summer. They sat on the mattress, smoking--an
accomplishment Marcella had learnt from him and practised rather
tentatively. She talked to him of Lashnagar, pouring into his ears
legend after legend of her people, until she came to the tale of the
spaewife and the coming of the ruin upon Lashnagar.

"Do you mean to have the cheek to say this is an ancestor