He had not to wait long for some explanation of the vision. At breakfast (and it was a wonderful breakfast, with more eggs and bacon, cream and strawberry jam than he had ever known) his father said: “Now, children, there’s one thing here that you must remember. Jeremy, are you listening?” “Yes, father.” “Don’t speak with your mouth full. There’s a farm near the church on the sand. You can’t mistake it.” “Is the farm on the sand, father?” asked Mary, her eyes wide open. “No, of course not. How could a farm be on the sand? The farm-house stands back at the end of the path that runs by the church. It’s a grey farm with a high stone wall. You can’t mistake it. Well, none of you children are to go near that farm—on no account whatever, _on no account whatever_, to go near it.” “Why not, father?” asked Jeremy. “Is there scarlet fever there?” “Because I say so is quite enough,” said Mr. Cole. “There’s a family staying there you must have _nothing at all_ to do with. Perhaps you will see them in the distance. You must avoid them and _never_ speak to them.” “Are they _very_ wicked?” asked Mary, her voice vibrating low with the drama of the situation. “Never mind what they are. They are not fit companions for you children. It is most unfortunate that they are here so close to us. Had I known it I would not, I think, have come here.” Jeremy said nothing; these were, of course, his friends of the morning. He could see now straight across the breakfast-table those eight burning, staring eyes. Later, from the slope of the green hill above the rectory, he looked across the gleaming beach at the church, the road, and then, in the distance, the forbidden farm. Strange how the forbidding of anything made one from the very bottom of one’s soul long for it! Yesterday, staring across the green slopes and hollows, the farm would have been but a grey patch sewn into the purple hill that hung behind it. Now it was mysterious, crammed with hidden life of its own, the most dramatic point in the whole landscape. What had they done, that family that was so terrible? What was there about those four boys that he had never seen in any boys before? He longed to know them with a burning, desperate longing. Nevertheless a whole week passed without any contact. Once Jeremy saw, against the sky-line on the hill behind the church, a trail of four, single file, silhouetted black. They passed steadily, secretly, bent on their own mysterious purposes. The sky, when their figures had left it, was painted with drama.