he high wall receded and ascended in not extreme grades
to the topmost pitch, where the sun was hanging well on the ponent slope.

His strict investigation took him round each wide scallop of the
enclosure, a course that was long to conclude by reason of exquisite
distractions that beset every hollow of the way. For the clear rock pools
he found in these reserves held splendours of the sea's living blossoms:
glowing beds of anemones full blown, with purples of iris and orchis,
clover red, rose red, sorrel red, hues of primrose and saffron, broad
spread like great chrysanthemums' bosses. And above the wavy fringes,
never quite motionless, dark wet buds hung waiting for the tide; and the
crystal integrity mirroring these was stirred by flashes of silver-green
light, the to-and-fro play of lovely minute rock-fish.

He had circled two-thirds and more when to his vigilant perceptions a
hint came. Some ribbons of glossy weed hanging from shoulder height
stirred a trifle overmuch in their shelter to the touch of wind.
Instantly the wary boy thrust a hand through and encountered, not rock,
but a void behind; he parted the thick fall of weed, and a narrow cleft
was uncurtained, with blackness beyond, that to his peering dissolved
into a cool, dim sea-cave, floored with water semilucent, roofed with
darkness. Eagerly he pressed through, and dropped knee-deep into the
still, dark water. Involuntarily his motions were subdued; silently,
gently, he advanced into the midst of encompassing water and rock and
darkness.

Such slight intrusion of daylight as the heavy kelp drapery allowed
slanted into the glooms in slender, steady threads; from his wading hosts
of wan lights broke and ran for the walls, casting up against them paler
repeats; when he halted, faint sound from them wapped and sobbed,
dominant items in a silence hardly discomposed by the note of far-off
surf, so modulated by deflecting angles as to reach the ear faint and low
as the murmur that haunts the curves of a shell.

For a long minute he stood in the midst motionless, while the chill of
the water told on his blood, and the quiet darkness on his spirit.
Mystery stepped here with an intimate touch, absent when under the open
sky the sands presented their enigma. His heart did not fail; only
resolution ordered it now, not impulse.

He spoke again to presumable ears. Only his own words he heard multiply
in fading whispers through the hovering darkness. Silence came b