“But whenever you’ve got things they’re yours,” said Willie Breen, unconvinced. “You don’t have things――isn’t that what I’m saying? Everything belongs to the State――they belong to everybody.” “Socialists are always poor,” put in Sam’s chum, Robbie McCann, unenthusiastically. “Those lads that were round here tried to get up a collection.” “Of course they’re poor,” said Sam, pityingly. “You can’t give up every thin’ and be rich, can you? For dear sake have a bit of wit!” “Would _their_ aunt have to give up her place?” asked Willie Breen, jerking his head toward the Dales. “Why wouldn’t she? Does it belong to her?” This was a bold idea, and Sam accompanied it with a glare of defiance at Gerald, from whom, nevertheless, a minute ago he had accepted a second cigarette. “Of course it belongs to her,” said Willie, wonderingly. “Not rightly. Man alive, but you’re all thick in the head. The point is that nobody has a right to anything――more’n anybody else, I mean.” “You know all about it, don’t you?” asked Gerald, gently. “I know more than you, anyway, stink-pot,” said Sam. Two or three of the bigger boys laughed, and I began to foresee trouble. “We needn’t start a row, need we?” I suggested, amicably. “I’m not startin’ a row; it was him. What call has he to put in his jaw. He wasn’t asked to come.” “He was asked,” I replied. “Ay――maybe by you――that’s nothin’.” “Let’s tell stories,” Willie Breen proposed. “Do you know how they make castor oil? There’s a woman told me she saw it. It was a big round room, and corpses hanging from hooks in the ceiling; and from the ends of their toes yellow drops were falling into a basin. That was castor oil.” “I’m sure. Anybody can blether you up, Billy.” “I’m not saying I believe it.” “It’s a wonder.” Suddenly a deep, low boom rose up from the sea, as if coming out of the infinite night, swelling, like the heavy bass note of an organ, and dying away. Katherine laid her hand on my arm. “What was that?” she said. “It’s nothing,” I murmured; but a vague sense of awe had crept over the little group. “It came last summer for the first time, didn’t it?” asked George Edge, a boy who had not spoken before. He had been lying on his back, looking up at the floating stars, but he now raised himself on his elbow and looked out to sea. He was not one of the village boys, but his people came down every summer for two months, and I had known him all my life. “My mother gets frightened when she hears it,” he went on. There was a pause, and then the sound came again, floating up, weird and mysterious, as from somewhere far out on the water. We drew closer round the fire, and began again to talk, but the conversation had grown darker. “It was here that the murder was,” said another boy, hidden in the shadow of the rock, so that his voice seemed a disembodied sound speaking out of the darkness. “Just over there,” said George Edge. “What murder?” asked Gerald.