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white arms, hair the color of amber, and startled blue eyes—a good mate for Rooksby. Rooksby had foreign relations, too. The uncle from whom he inherited the Priory had married a Riego, a Castilian, during the Peninsular war. He had been a prisoner at the time-he had died in Spain, I think. When Ralph made the grand tour, he had made the acquaintance of his Spanish relations; he used to talk about them, the Riegos, and Veronica used to talk of what he said of them until they came to stand for Romance, the romance of the outer world, to me. One day, a little before Ralph and Veronica became engaged, these Spaniards descended out of the blue. It was Romance suddenly dangled right before my eyes. It was Romance; you have no idea what it meant to me to talk to Carlos Riego.




his Tomas Castro. I had an intense longing to go with him out into the great world that brooded all round our foot-hills.

You are to remember that I knew nothing whatever of that great world. I had never been further away from our farm than just to Canterbury school, to Hythe market, to Romney market. Our farm nestled down under the steep, brown downs, just beside the Roman road to Canterbury; Stone Street—the Street-we called it. Ralph's land was just on the other side of the Street, and the shepherds on the downs used to see of nights a dead-andgone Rooksby, Sir Peter that was, ride upon it past the quarry with his head under his arm. I don't think I believed in him, but I believed in the smugglers who shared the highway with that horrible ghost. It is impossible for anyone nowadays to conceive the effect these smugglers had upon life thereabouts and then. They were the power to which everything else deferred. They used to overrun the country in great bands, and brooked no interference with their business. Not long before they had defeated regular troops in a pitched battle on the marsh, and on the very day I went away I remember we couldn't do our carting because the smugglers had given us notice they would need our horses in the evening. They were a power in the land where there was violence enough without them, God knows! Our position on that Street put us in the midst of it all. At dusk we shut our doors, pulled down our blinds, sat round the fire, and knew pretty well what was going on outside. There would be long whistles in the dark, and when we found men lurking in our barns we feigned not to see them-it was safer so. The smugglers—the Free Traders, they called themselves—were as well organized for helping malefactors out of the country as for running goods in; so it came about that we used to have coiners and forgers, murderers and French spies-all sorts of malefactors—hiding in our straw throughout the day, waiting for the whistle to blow from the Street at dusk. I, born with my century, was familiar with these things; but my mother forbade my meddling with them. I expect she knew enough herself—all the resident gentry did. But Ralph -though he was to some extent of the new school, and used to boast that, if applied to, he would grant a warrant against any Free Trader-never did, as a matter of fact, or not for many years,

Carlos, then, Rooksby's Spanish kinsman, had come and gone, and I envied him his going, with his air of mystery, to some far-off lawless adventures—perhaps over there in Spain, where there were war and rebellion. Shortly afterwards Rooksby proposed for the hand of Veronica and was accepted-by my mother. Veronica went about looking happy. That upset me, too. It seemed unjust that she would go out into the great world--to Bath, to Brighton, should see the Prince Regent and the great fights on Hounslow Heath-whilst I was to remain forever a farmer's boy. That afternoon I was upstairs, looking at the reflection of myself in the tall glass, wondering miserably why I seemed to be such an oaf.

The voice of Rooksby hailed me suddenly from downstairs. "Hey, John-John Kemp; come down, I say !”

I started away from the glass as if I had been taken in an act of folly. Rooksby was ficking his leg with his switch in the doorway, at the bottom of the narrow Aight of stairs.

He wanted to talk to me, he said, and I followed him out through the yard on to the soft road that climbs the hill to westward. The evening was falling slowly and mournfully; it was dark already in the folds of the somber downs.

We passed the corner of the orchard.

"I know what you've got to tell me,” I said. “You're going to marry Veronica. Well, you've no need of my blessing. Some people have all the luck. Here am I look at me! Ralph walked with his head bent down.

Confound it," I said, " I shall run away to sea! I tell you, I'm rotting, rotting! There! I say, Ralph, give me Carlos' direction.

I caught hold of his arm. “I'll go after him. He'd show me a little life. He said he would.”




“Curse Carlos, and his Castro, too. They'll have me in jail

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