all the
toys the world provides for right-minded persons, the original elements
rank easily the first.

But Selina sat on where she was, her chin on her fists; and her fancies
whirled and drifted, here and there, in curls and eddies, along with the
smoke she was watching. As the quick-footed dusk of the short October
day stepped lightly over the garden, little red tongues of fire might
be seen to leap and vanish in the smoke. Harold, anon staggering under
armfuls of leaves, anon stoking vigorously, was discernible only at
fitful intervals. It was another sort of smoke that the inner eye of
Selina was looking upon,--a smoke that hung in sullen banks round the
masts and the hulls of the fighting ships; a smoke from beneath which
came thunder and the crash and the splinter-rip, the shout of the
boarding party, the choking sob of the gunner stretched by his gun; a
smoke from out of which at last she saw, as through a riven pall, the
radiant spirit of the Victor, crowned with the coronal of a perfect
death, leap in full assurance up into the ether that Immortals breathe.
The dusk was glooming towards darkness when she rose and moved slowly
down towards the beckoning fire; something of the priestess in her
stride, something of the devotee in the set purpose of her eye.

The leaves were well alight by this time, and Harold had just added an
old furze bush, which flamed and crackled stirringly.

"Go 'n' get some more sticks," ordered Selina, "and shavings, 'n' chunks
of wood, 'n' anything you can find. Look here--in the kitchen-garden
there's a pile of old pea-sticks. Fetch as many as you can carry, and
then go back and bring some more!"

"But I say,--" began Harold, amazedly, scarce knowing his sister, and
with a vision of a frenzied gardener, pea-stickless and threatening
retribution.

"Go and fetch 'em quick!" shouted Selina, stamping with impatience.

Harold ran off at once, true to the stern system of discipline in which
he had been nurtured. But his eyes were like round O's, and as he ran he
talked fast to himself, in evident disorder of mind.

The pea-sticks made a rare blaze, and the fire, no longer smouldering
sullenly, leapt up and began to assume the appearance of a genuine
bonfire. Harold, awed into silence at first, began to jump round it with
shouts of triumph. Selina looked on grimly, with knitted brow; she
was not yet fully satisfied. "Can't you get any more sticks?" she said
presently. "Go and hunt abou