Far to Seek | Page 7

herself
astride a downward sweeping branch just above Roy's head. There she
perched like a slim blue flower, dangling her tan-stockinged legs and
shaking her hair at him like golden rain. She was in one of her impish
moods; reaction, perhaps,--though she knew it not--from the high
tragedy of that other Tara, her namesake, and the great
greatest-possible grandmother of her adored 'Aunt Lila.' Suddenly a
fresh impulse seized her. Clutching her bough, she leaned down and
lightly ruffled his hair.
He started and looked reproachful. "Don't rumple me. I'm going."

"You needn't, if you don't want to," she cooed caressingly. "_I_'m
going to the tipmost top to see out over the world. And the Princess
doesn't care a bean about the Golden Tusks--truly."
"She's jolly pleased with the knight that finds them," said Roy with a
deeper wisdom than he knew. "And you can't be stopped off quests that
way. Come on, Prince."
At a bend in the mossy path, he looked back and she waved her lily
hand.
* * * * *
To be alone in the deep of the wood in bluebell time was, for Roy, a
sensation by itself. In a moment, you stepped through some unseen
door straight into fairy-land--or was it a looking-glass world? For here
the sky lay all around your feet in a shimmer of bluebells: and high
overhead were domes of cool green light, where the sun came
flickering and filtering through millions of leaves. Always, as far as he
could remember, the magical feeling had been there. But this morning
it came over him in a queer way. This morning--though he could not
quite make it out--there was the Roy that felt and the Roy that knew he
felt, just as there had suddenly been when he was watching his mother's
face. And this magical world was his kingdom. In some far-off time, it
would all be his very own. That uplifting thought eclipsed every
other....
Lost in one of his dreaming moods, he wandered on and on, with
Prince at his heels. He forgot all about Tara and his knighthood and his
quest; till suddenly--where the trees fell apart--his eye was arrested by
twin shafts of sunlight that struck downward through the green gloom.
He caught his breath and stood still. "I've found them! The Golden
Tusks!" he murmured ecstatically.
The pity was he couldn't carry them back with him as trophies. He
could only watch them fascinated, wondering how you could explain
what you didn't understand yourself. All he knew was that they made

him feel 'dazzled inside,' and he wanted to watch them more.
It was beautiful out in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a
big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the
moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking
up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind
talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that
make up the silence of a wood in summer.
And again he forgot about Tara and the Game and the silver watch that
made him reliable. He simply lay there in a trance-like stillness, that
was not of the West, absorbing it all, with his eyes and his dazzled
brain and with every sentient nerve in his body. And again--as when his
mother smiled her praise--the Spring sunshine itself seemed to flow
through his veins....
* * * * *
Suddenly he came alive and sat upright. Something was happening.
The Golden Tusks had disappeared, and the domes of cool green light
and the far blue sky and the lazy white cloud. Under the beeches it was
almost twilight--a creepy twilight, as if a giant had blown out the sun.
Was it really evening? Had he been asleep? Only his watch could
answer that, and never had he loved it more dearly. No--it was daytime.
Twenty past twelve--and he would be late----
A long rumbling growl, that seemed to shudder through the wood, so
startled him that it set little hammers beating all over his body. Then
the wind grew angrier--not whispering secrets now, but tearing at the
tree-tops and lashing the branches this way and that. And every minute
the wood grew darker, and the sky overhead was darkest of all--the
colour of spilled ink. And there was Tara--his forgotten
Princess--waiting for him in her high tower; or perhaps she had given
up waiting and gone home.
"Come on, Prince," he said, "we must run!"
The sound of his own voice was vaguely comforting: but the moment

he began to run, he felt as if some one--or Something--was running
after him. He knew there was nothing. He knew it was babyish. But
what could you do if your