The northern side of the Red Place was quite different in character from the side which first smiled on the gardener. This was because one essential detail was lacking—the heather. Fire had passed over the little space at some recent date in its sleepy history, and had left it sinister. Tortured roots and branches appealed from the black ground to a blue heaven. The surrounding pine trees, with their feet charred and blistered, and their higher limbs still fiercely red, still looked like flames now turned into pillars of delight in answer to the prayer of the beseeching heather. “Is there anybody in your hotel?” asked the gardener, smoothing his hair hopefully—the young man’s invariable prelude to romance. “Nobody, except the gods,” replied the host. “We sit here waiting, the divine and I. There is a blessing on the place, and I intend to make money out of it. You can see for yourself how wonderfully good it is. If people knew of the peace and the delight.... The table is excellent too—I am the chef as well as the proprietor. Our terms are most moderate.” “All the same you need advertisement,” said the gardener, who, in unguarded moments, was more modern than he knew. “I can imagine most sensational advertising of a place with such a pronounced blessing on it. Buy up the front page of the _Daily Mail_, and let’s compose a series of splashes.” “I am penniless,” began Mr. Rust dramatically, and interrupted himself. “A slight tendency towards financial inadequacy—what?” “I have three halfpence,” said the gardener, but not hopefully. “Come in for the night,” begged the host. “I have twelve bedrooms for you to sleep in, and three bathrooms tiled in red. Terms a halfpenny, _tout compris_.” “Tra-la-la ...” trilled the gardener, for as he followed his host the heather tingled and tossed beneath his feet, and the gods came out to meet him with a red welcome. “You have nothing to do—what?” said Mr. Samuel Rust, when they were sitting in the high russet hall. “We-ll ...” answered the gardener, feeling that the suggestion of failure lurked there. “I am a rover, you know. Busy roving.” “To say that shows you haven’t roved sixty miles yet. When you’ve roved six hundred you’ll see there’s nothing to be got out of roving. When you’ve roved six thousand you’ll join the Travellers’ Club and be glad it’s all over.” “Six thousand miles ...” said the gardener, as if it were a prayer. His heart looked and leapt towards the long, crowded perspective that those words hinted. “You’ve never been to sea,” continued Mr. Samuel. And the gardener discovered with a jerk that he was a blue man born for the sea, and that he had never yet felt the swing of blue water beneath his feet. “No,” he said, “I believe I must go there now.” And he jumped to his feet. “If you stay here for the night,” said Mr. Rust, “to-morrow I’ll suggest to you something that—may possibly interest you to some slight extent.”