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Lazily she sat up and looked about her.

She had never before strayed further than their shadows’ length from the beeches: the low-banked trench, where the twins played ‘King of the Castle’ and the sheep huddled against the rain, had fenced off adventure. But today she and the wind had cleared it in a flying leap and had run out to the very edge of the wide level table-land that had bounded her view, and before her lay unknown valleys and ridges, valleys and ridges, rolling away to the sky-line like waves of the sea.

And on the sky-line itself, trembling between earth and heaven as if it were a great diamond swinging on a silver chain, hung a glancing, shimmering translucency in the shape of a house—a castle—a king’s pavilion—with a central arch that glistered like a high priest’s breast-plate, and twin towers reflecting the sun in glints and rays and flashes of white and golden light.

For a long minute Laura sat motionless, staring—staring. Then her heart began to beat so wildly that she felt the thud of it as a sharp pain, and her cold little fingers dug and clutched at the soft turf. She could hardly breathe: she was choking, drowning in the flood of joy that swirled over her like waters set free. She sat, white and sick with ecstasy, her eyes devouring the miracle, while in her ears remembered phrases pealed like wedding bells.