goaded to rise from their self-glorified strutting and preening to fly stiff and screaming the few spaces which were their farthest. But neither the farm hands nor the gardener told. Why—it is not easy to say. They did not particularly like Stephen—few people did. But they feared him. He mastered their wills. A solitary child, not half so happy as childhood has every right to be, the boy met few he did not influence sharply. His was a masterful nature. Little altogether escaped his subtle dominance.

Stephen was not essentially cruel. His cruelty was corollary and accessory to his passion—a passion for power and for the secrets of aerial skill. He bore the birds no ill-will. He simply was obsessed to see their flight, and to study it, garnering up in his odd, isolated, accretive child’s mind—and heart—every vibrant curve and beat of their wings, every angle and bend of their bodies.

Stephen usually was watching the flight of a bird, or scheming some mechanical imitation of it.

Hugh usually was doing something for wee Helen, doing it with perspiring and sighful awkwardness and for scant thanks—or for none.

Helen usually was playing by herself, and pretending, as now, to be sharing the sport of some playfellow, perfectly tangible to her, but invisible, non-existent to the boys—a form of persistent “make believe” which greatly amused Hugh and as greatly irritated Stephen.

“Don’t pretend like that; it’s a simpleton way of going on,” the older boy called to her now, without moving his head or his eyes.

“It’s nothing of the kind,” the girl replied scornfully. “You’re blind, that’s what’s the matter—blinder’n a bat, both of you.” And she continued to laugh and chat with her “make-believe” playmates.

An elfin child herself, the children of her own delicate myth did seem the more suitable fellows for her dainty frolic than either queer Stephen or stolid, clumsy Hugh.

The little girl was very pretty, a queenly little head heavy with vivid waves of gold-red hair, curved red lips eloquent of the history of centuries of womanhood, wide blue eyes, and the prettiest hands and arms that even feminine babyhood (and English babyhood, Celtic-dashed at that) had ever yet achieved; every pink-tipped finger a miracle, and each soft, beautifully molded elbow, dimpled and dented with witching chinks that simply clamored for kisses—and often got them; a sunny, docile child, yielding but unafraid, 

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