The Rocks of Valpré | Page 2

wind caught her red-brown hair and blew it out like a cloak behind
her. It was still damp, for she had been bathing, and when the wind had
passed it settled again in long, gleaming ripples upon her shoulders.
She pushed it away from her face with an impatient hand.
"Cinders," she said, "if you don't come soon I shall go and find the
Knight of the Magic Cave all by myself."
But even this threat did not move the enthusiastic Cinders. All that

could be seen of him was a pair of sturdy hind-legs firmly planted amid
a whirl of sand. Quite plainly it was nothing to him what steps his
young mistress might see fit to take to relieve her boredom.
"All right!" said Chris, springing to her feet with a flourish of her towel.
"Then good-bye!"
She shook the hair back from her face, slipped her bare feet into
sandals, slung the towel across her shoulders, and turned her face to the
cliffs.
They frowned above the rock-strewn beach to a height of two hundred
feet, tunnelled here and there by the sea, scored here and there by
springs, rising mass upon mass, in some places almost perpendicular, in
others overhanging.
They possessed an immense fascination for Chris Wyndham, these
cliffs. There was a species of dreadful romance about them that
attracted even while it awed her. She longed to explore them, and yet
deep in the most private recesses of her soul she was half-afraid. So
many terrible stories were told of this particular corner of the rocky
coast. So many ships were wrecked, so many lives were lost, so many
hopes were quenched forever between the cliffs and the sea.
But these facts did not prevent her weaving romances about those
wonderful caves. For instance, there was the Magic Cave, for which
she was bound now, the entrance to which was only accessible at low
tide. There was something particularly imposing about this entrance,
something palatial, that stirred the girl's quick fancy. She had never
before quite reached it on account of the difficulty of the approach; but
she had promised herself that she would do so sooner or later, when
time and tide should permit.
Both chanced to be favourable on this particular afternoon, and she set
forth light-footed upon the adventure, leaving Cinders to his
monotonous but all-engrossing pastime. A wide line of rocks stretched
between her and her goal, which was dimly discernible in the deep
shadow of the cliff--a mysterious opening that had the appearance of a

low Gothic archway.
"I'm sure it's haunted," said Chris, and fell forthwith to dreaming as she
stepped along the sunlit sand.
Of course she would find an enchanted hall, peopled by crabs that were
not crabs at all, but the afore-mentioned knight and his retinue, all
bound by the same wicked spell. "And I shall have to find out what it is
and set him free," said Chris, with a sigh of pleasurable anticipation.
"And then, I suppose, he will begin to jabber French, and I shall wish to
goodness I hadn't. I expect he will want to marry me, poor thing! And I
shall have to explain--in French, ugh!--that as he is only a foreigner I
couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, entertain such a
preposterous notion for a single instant. No, I am afraid that would
sound rather rude. How else could I put it?"
Chris's brow wrinkled over the problem. She had reached the outlying
rocks of the belt she had to cross, and was picking her way between the
pools in deep abstraction.
"I wonder!" she murmured to herself. "I wonder!"
Then suddenly her rapt expression broke into a merry smile. "I know!
Of course! Absurdly easy! I shall tell him that I am under a spell
too--bound beyond all chance of escape to marry an Englishman." The
sweet face dimpled over the inspiration. "That ought to settle him,
unless he is very persevering; in which case of course I should have to
tell him--quite kindly--that I really didn't think I could. Fancy marrying
a crab--and a French crab too!"
She began to laugh, gaily, irrepressibly, light-heartedly, and skipped on
to the first weed-covered rock that obstructed her path. It was an
exceedingly slippery perch. She poised herself with arms outspread,
with a butterfly grace as airy as her visions.
Away in the distance Cinders, nearing exhaustion, leaned on one elbow
and scratched spasmodically with his free paw.

"Good-bye, Cinders!" she called to him in her high young voice. "I'm
never coming back any more."
Lightly she waved her hand and sprang for another rock. But her feet
slipped on the seaweed, and she splashed down into a pool ankle-deep.
"Bother!" she said, with vehemence. "It's these silly sandals. I'll leave
them here till