and fine deeds.  The figures of Spartacus, Montrose, Hofer, Garibaldi, Hampden, and John Nicholson, were more real to him than the people among whom he lived, though he had learned never to mention—­especially not to the matter-of-fact Sheila—­his encompassing cloud of heroes; but, when he was alone, he pranced a bit with them, and promised himself that he too would reach the stars.  So you may sometimes see a little, grave boy walking through a field, unwatched as he believes, suddenly fling his feet and his head every which way.  An active nature, romantic, without being dreamy and book-loving, is not too prone to the attacks of love; such a one is likely to survive unscathed to a maturer age.  But Nedda had seduced him, partly by the appeal of her touchingly manifest love and admiration, and chiefly by her eyes, through which he seemed to see such a loyal, and loving little soul looking.  She had that indefinable something which lovers know that they can never throw away.  And he had at once made of her, secretly, the crown of his active romanticism—­the lady waiting for the spoils of his lance.  Queer is the heart of a boy—­strange its blending of reality and idealism!

Climbing at a great pace, he reached Malvern Beacon just as it came dawn, and stood there on the top, watching.  He had not much aesthetic sense; but he had enough to be impressed by the slow paling of the stars over space that seemed infinite, so little were its dreamy confines visible in the May morning haze, where the quivering crimson flags and spears of sunrise were forging up in a march upon the sky.  That vision of the English land at dawn, wide and mysterious, hardly tallied with Mr. Cuthcott’s view of a future dedicate to Park and Garden City.  While Derek stood there gazing, the first lark soared up and began its ecstatic praise.  Save for that song, silence possessed all the driven dark, right out to the Severn and the sea, and the fastnesses of the Welsh hills, and the Wrekin, away in the north, a black point in the gray.  For a moment dark and light hovered and clung together.  Would victory wing back into night or on into day?  Then, as a town is taken, all was over in one overmastering rush, and light proclaimed.  Derek tightened his belt and took a bee-line down over the slippery grass.  He meant to reach the cottage of the laborer Tryst before that early bird was away to the fields.  He meditated as he went.  Bob Tryst was all right!  If they only had a dozen or two like him!  A dozen or two whom they could trust, and who would trust each other and stand firm to form the nucleus of a strike, which could be timed for hay harvest.  What slaves these laborers still were!  If only they could be relied on, if only they would stand together!  Slavery!  It was slavery; so long as they could be turned out of their homes at will in this fashion.  His rebellion against the conditions of their lives, above all against the manifold petty tyrannies that he knew they underwent,