“Put your head close to mine and I’ll show you. . . . Those hills that look like mountains cut out of blue cardboard are the Malverns, and far, ever so far beyond them—yes, just to the left you see a level ridge that drops suddenly in the west. You don’t know what that is, Eddie, do you?” “No—I don’t like to look at single things. I like to feel it’s all—what d’you call it?—all dreamy underneath one.” “But you must look at that. It’s the mountain, Eddie, close to where I was born.” “Felindre?” he asked. “Yes.” “But I never knew that you could see it from here. You never told me.” “You know why. I told you that I was never happy there. And now, you see, since the old people died and the land was sold, it really has nothing to do with us.” “Still, it’s rather wonderful to be looking into—into another country. It is Wales, isn’t it?” “Yes—part of it’s in Wales. Felindre is in England.” Edwin pondered for a moment. “I’m rather glad I’m not half-Welsh, anyway,” he said. “But I wish I’d been there.” “Do you?” she answered dreamily. “Yes—I wish we had been there together. It was a different sort of life. I thought—I just thought I should like to see it again.” He was a little alarmed at the wistfulness in her voice. “Mother—what do you mean?” he cried. “Nothing, Eddie, nothing. It was another life.” She put her arms round his neck and pulled him gently to her. He was content to lie there, with his head on her breast, while she talked in a low voice of that distant place and of her own childhood. He listened in a dream and did not speak at all until she began to tell him a long story which the Felindre shepherd, Morgan, had told her when she was a child. Then Edwin opened his eyes and stopped her. “Dearest, I know that story,” he said. “Oh, go on, it’s wonderful. . . .” “Perhaps I’ve told it to you before: perhaps I told you when you were a baby—I used to talk to you a great deal in your cradle. Perhaps . . . I was rather lonely when you came, Eddie.” “Oh, no, I’m sure you haven’t. . . .” “Look, the cloud is blotting out my mountain now,” she said. “It is time we were going.” The counties were asleep already. Over the brow of the hill they stepped into a different world, for where the smoke of the black country had blotted the fading skyline a hundred pit fires were beginning to blink out, and nearer still a pillar of flame shot up into the sky. “Oh, look, mother,” Edwin cried. “They’re puddling the iron at the great Mawne furnaces. Stand still a moment, we might almost hear their roar.” But no sound came to them but the clear tinkle of a stream plunging into its mossy cup, and this seemed to bring them back into touch with the lands that they had left. They hurried down through the dark woodland paths, and when they reached the little town lights had bloomed in all the ugly cottage windows, and the streets seemed deserted, for the children were indoors. III