than the light, elastic step of a girl. Somehow, I don't remember it in pictures. Perhaps – some day – I may – ' He began to talk in unconnected jerks. 'As for the Greek maiden by the sea-shore playing at ball and showing bony shoulders, and all that – I don't like it. Only very young girls should play at ball and jump about – not women grown and formed. They may walk or spring as much as they like, but they must not jump, and they must not run. They must not laugh loud. Violent emotions are masculine. Figure and dress alike make violence ungraceful: that is why I don't like to see women jump about. If they knew how it uglifies most of them! Armorel is only a child – yes – but how graceful, how complete she is in her movements!'
She was now visible, even to a short-sighted man, tripping lightly through the fern on the slope of the hill. As she ran, she tossed her arms to balance herself from boulder to boulder. She was singing, too, but those in the boat could not hear her; and before the keel touched the sand she was silent.
She stood waiting for them on the beach, her old dog Jack beside her, a smile of welcome in her eyes, and the sunlight on her cheeks. Hebe herself – who remained always fifteen from prehistoric times until the melancholy catastrophe of the fourth century, when, with the other Olympians, she was snuffed out – was not sweeter, more dainty, or stronger, or more vigorous of aspect.
'I thought you would come across this morning,' she said. 'I went to the top of the hill and looked out, and presently I saw your boat. You have not ventured out alone again, I see. Good-morning, Roland Lee! Good-morning, Dick Stephenson!'
She called them thus by their Christian names, not with familiarity, but quite naturally, and because when she went into the world – that is to say, to Bryher Church – on Sunday afternoon, each called unto each by his Christian name. And to each she gave her hand with a smile of welcome. But it seemed to Dick, who was observant rather than jealous, that his companion appropriated to himself and absorbed both smiles.
'Shall I show you Samson? Have you seen the islands yet?'
No; they had only arrived two days before, and were going back the next day.
'Many do that,' said the girl. 'They stay here a day or two: they go across to Tresco and see the gardens: then perhaps they walk over Sallakey Down, and they see Peninnis and Porthellick and the old church, and they think they have seen the islands. You will know nothing whatever about Scilly if you go to-morrow.'
'Why should we go to-morrow?' asked the artist. 'Tell me, that, Dick.'
'I, because my time is up, and Somerset House once more expects me. You, my friend,' Dick replied, with meaning, 'because you have got your work to do and you must not fool around any longer.'
Roland Lee laughed. 'We came first of all,' he said, turning to Armorel, 'in order to thank you for – '
'Oh! you thanked me last night. Besides it was Peter – '
'No, no. I refuse to believe in Peter.'
'Well, do not let us say any more about it. Come with me.'
The landing-place of Samson is a flat beach, covered with a fine white sand and strewn with little shells – yellow and grey, green and blue. Behind the beach is a low bank on which grow the sea-holly, the sea-lavender, the horned poppy, and the spurge, and behind the bank stretches a small plain, low and sandy, raised above the high tide by no more than a foot or two. Armorel led the way across this plain to the foot of the northern hill. It is a rough and rugged hill, wild and uncultivated. The slope facing the south is covered with gorse and fern, the latter brown and yellow in September. Among the fern at this season stood the tall dead stalks of foxglove. Here and there were patches of short turf set about with the withered flowers of the sea-pink, and the long branches of the bramble lay trailing over the ground. The hand of some prehistoric giant has sprinkled the slopes of this hill with boulders of granite: they are piled above each other so as to make carns, headlands, and capes with strange resemblances and odd surprises. Upon the top they found a small plateau sloping gently to the north.
'See!' said Armorel. 'This is the finest thing we have to show on Samson, or on any of the islands. This is the burial-place of the kings. Here are their tombs.'
'What kings?' asked Dick, looking about him. 'Where are the tombs?'
'The kings,' Roland repeated; 'there can be no other kings. These are their tombs. Do not interrupt.'
'The ancient kings,' Armorel replied, with historic precision. 'These mounds are their tombs. See – one – two – half a dozen of them are here. Only kings had barrows raised over them. Did you expect graves and headstones, Dick Stephenson?'
'Oh, these are barrows, are they?' he replied, in some confusion. A man of the world does not expect to be caught in ignorance by the solitary inhabitant of a desert island.
'A long time ago,' Armorel went on, 'these islands formed part of the mainland. Bryher and Tresco, St. Helen's, Tean, St. Martin's and St. Mary's, were all joined together, and the road was only a creek of the sea. Then the sea washed away all the land between Scilly and the Land's End. They used to call the place Lyonesse. The kings of Lyonesse were buried on Samson. Their kingdom is gone, but their graves remain. It is said that their ghosts have been seen. Dorcas saw them once.'
'I should like to see them very much,' said Roland.
'If you were here at night, we could go out and look for them. I have been here often after dark looking for them.'
'What did you see?'
She answered like unto the bold Sir Bedivere – who, perhaps, was standing on that occasion not far from this hill-top.
'I saw the moonlight on the rocks, and I heard the beating of the waves.'
Quoth Dick: 'The spook of a king of Lyonesse would be indeed worth coming out to see.'
Armorel led the way to a barrow, the top of which showed signs of the spade.
'See!' she said. 'Here is one that has been opened. It was a long time ago.'
There were the four slabs of stone still in position which formed the sides of the grave, and the slab which had been its cover lying close beside.
Armorel looked into the grave. 'They found,' she whispered, 'the bones of the king lying on the stone. But when someone touched them they turned to dust. There is the dust at your feet in the grave. The wind cannot bear it away. It may blow the sand and earth into it, but the dust remains. The rain can turn it into mud, but it cannot melt it. This is the dust of a king.'
The young men stood beside her silent, awed a little, partly by the serious look in the girl's face, and partly because, though it now lay open to the wind and rain, it was really a grave. One must not laugh beside the grave of a man. The wind lifted Armorel's long locks and blew them off her white forehead: her eyes were sad and even solemn. Even the short-sighted Dick saw that his friend was right: they were soft black eyes, not of the gipsy kind; and he repented him of a hasty inference. To the artist it seemed as if here was a princess of Lyonesse mourning over the grave of her buried king and – what? – father – brother – cousin – lover? Everything, in his imagination, vanished – except that one figure: even her clothes were changed for the raiment – say the court mourning – of that vanished realm. And also, like Sir Bedivere, he heard nothing but the wild water lapping on the crag.
And here followed a thing so strange that the historian hesitates about putting it down.
Let us remember that it is thirty years, or thereabouts, since this barrow was laid open; that we may suppose those who opened it to have
