"I am your child too--Spirits of the North and East. You can't frighten me. I defy you." And the two laughed and shouted with wild glee at their foster-child's great spirit. "He does us credit," they cried, though old Jonas passing by heard nothing but a shriek of fresh fury up above, and shouted to Gratian to hasten within shelter. But winter never lasts for ever. Spring came again--slow and reluctant--and it was long before Gray-wings consented to take her yearly nap and let her sister of the west soothe and comfort the storm-tossed country. And then, as day by day Gratian made his way to school, he watched with awakened and ever-awaking eyes the exquisite eternal beauty of the summer's gradual approach, till at last Golden-wings clasped him in her arms one morning and told him her joy at being able to return. "For I love this country, though no one will believe it," she said. "The scent of the gorse and the heather is delicious and refreshing after the strong spice perfumes of my own home;" and many a story she told the child, and many a song she sang to him through the long summer days--which he loved to spend in his old way, out among the heather with Jonas and Watch and the browsing sheep. For the holidays had begun. His mother was well, quite well, by now, and Gratian was free to do as he chose. He was out on the moors one day--a lovely cloudless day, that would have been sultry anywhere else--when old Jonas startled him by saying suddenly: "Did you know, Master Gratian, that the gentry's come back to the Big House?" Gratian sat straight up in his astonishment. "No, Jonas. How did you hear it?" "Down in the village, quite sudden-like. It was all got ready for them last week, but there's been none of us down there much lately." Gratian felt too excited to lie still and dream any more. [Illustration: It was Fergus, little lame Fergus, mounted on a tiny rough-coated pony, coming towards him!] "I'll ask mother if I may go and see," he said jumping up. And off he ran. But an unexpected sight met him at a stone's throw from the Farm. It was Fergus, little lame Fergus, mounted on a tiny rough-coated pony, coming towards him! And the joy of the meeting who could describe?