the hill.

One larger light burned in the room that was their marriage chamber.
Jean and Suzanne, the refugees, stood in the white porch to receive
them, holding the lanterns that were their marriage torches. The old
woman held her light low down, lighting the flagstone of the threshold.
The old man lifted his high, showing the lintel of the door. It was so
low that Nicholas had to stoop to go in.

* * * * *

In the morning they read the date cut in the wall above the porch: 1665.

The house was old and bent and grey. Its windows were narrow slits in
the stone mullions. It crouched under the dipping boughs of the ash-tree
that sheltered it. Inside there was just room for Veronica to stand up.
Nicholas had to stoop or knock his head against the beams. It had only
four rooms, two for Nicholas and Veronica, and two for Jean and Suzanne.
And it was rather dark.

But it pleased them. They said it was their apple-tree-house grown up
because they were grown up, and keeping strict proportions. You had to
crawl into it, and you were only really comfortable sitting or lying
down. So they sat outside it, watching old Suzanne through the window as
she moved about the house place, cooking Belgian food for them, and old
Jean as he worked in the garden.

Veronica loved Jean and Suzanne. She had found out all about them the
first morning.

"Only think, Nicky. They're from Termonde, and their house was burnt
behind them as they left it. They saw horrors, and their son was killed
in the War.

"Yet they're happy and at peace. Almost as if they'd forgotten. He'll
plant flowers in his garden."

"They're old, Ronny. And perhaps they were tired already when it
happened."

"Yes, that must be it. They're old and tired."

* * * * *

And now it was the last adventure of their last day. They were walking
on the slope of Renton Moor that looks over Rathdale towards Greffington
Edge. The light from the west poured itself in vivid green down the
valley below them, broke itself into purple on Karva Hill to the north
above Morfe, and was beaten back in subtle blue and violet from the
stone rampart of the Edge.

Nicholas had been developing, in fancy, the strategic resources of the
country. Guns on Renton Moor, guns along Greffington Edge, on Sarrack
Moor. The raking lines of the hills were straight as if they had been
measured with a ruler and then planed.

"Ronny," he sa