Caliphronas was an amphibious creature, and lived quite as much in the water as on the shore. Whenever he had the time to spare, he went off to Brasdimir for a dip in the sea, and would plunge and wallow in the water like a dolphin. Fortunately that summer at Roylands was unusually hot, and what with the cloudless skies, the burning sun, and the delicate emerald tints of foliage, grass, and herb, Caliphronas might well have imagined that he was still in his beloved Greece, bathing off some pebbly beach of the Ægean. Brasdimir was a somewhat peculiar place, and was in reality an arm of the sea (_bras de mer_) which ran up like a long tongue into the land, where it met the waters of the Roy river. In olden times, Roylands, which was its Norman-French name, had been the property of the crown, and had been used by the Plantagenets for their favorite pastime of hunting. Henry II. bestowed it on one of his barons who was strongly suspected of being a son of the king, but who on receiving this royal gift dropped his former name of Fitzroy and took that of Roylands. It was certainly a splendid property, and through all the turbulence of succeeding reigns the descendants of the first Roylands had succeeded in keeping their hold on these rich acres; so it was very little diminished in size from the time of its bestowal on Fitzroy. Brasdimir, which was a kind of estuary, ran about half a mile up into the estate, and into it flowed the little river Roy, which was a placid stream of no great beauty. All round Brasdimir lay fat meadows containing some of the finest land in the country, and clumps of beech and elm and oak, remnants of the old hunting-forest of Plantagenet kings, dotted their broad expanse of daisied sward. Near the upper part of Brasdimir, where it met the waters of the Roy and blended salt with fresh, stood a quincunx of noble oaks which grew close to the bank. From thence the smooth turf of the meadow sloped down to the turbulent waters, and it was here that Caliphronas came to bathe, not only every morning, but often three times a day. Being in the middle of the estate, Brasdimir was far away from all human habitation, and might have been the navel of some great wilderness, so lonely it was. The Greek loved this blending of fresh and salt water, as the softness of the one assuaged the harshness of the other, and under the hot sun would frequently cool himself in this unique pool, which was neither river nor stream, but a mixture of both. Very often Crispin and Maurice would come with him for a morning dip just before sunrise, and then walk back to the Grange with a tremendous appetite for breakfast.