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love. It was as though he smoothed the covers over one about to sleep and touched its arm to be reassured of its safety.

The day was light, for winter had inched back a bit and returned its hostage to the world—a small, cold sun. Young Henry came and stood near an elm by the wall, a tree draggled and leafless and gaunt with nursing the winds.

“You have been thinking as I asked you?” Robert spoke quietly.

Henry started. He did not know that the man, kneeling as though in adoration of the earth, had noticed him; and yet he had come here to be noticed.

“Yes, father,” he said. “How could I help be thinking?”

“And has it bound you here? Will you be staying?”

“No, father; I may not stay.” He had been made sad with his father's sadness. He felt mean and shoddy to be the cause of it, but the hunger to be going still gnawed in his heart.

“Will you be walking up to speak with Merlin on the crag-top, then?” Robert pleaded. “Will you listen to his words with great care?”

“I shall go now.”

“But, Henry, the day is half done with, and the track is long. Be waiting until the morrow.”

“I must be away the morrow, father.”

Old Robert's hands slipped away slowly to the ground and lay, half-open, on the black soil at the roots of the rose bush.