from the main road into the unfrequented country behind the Rose Pool and took them the longest way home along the banks on the Nancepean side, which were low and rushy unlike those on the Rosemarket side, which were steep and densely wooded. The great water, though usually described as heart-shaped, was really more like a pair of Gothic arches, the green cusp between which was crowned by a lonely farmhouse, El Dorado of Mark and his friend, and the base of which was the bar of shingle that kept out the sea. There was much to beguile the boys on the way home, whether it was the sight of strange wildfowl among the reeds, or the exploration of a ruined cottage set in an ancient cherry-orchard, or the sailing of paper boats, or even the mere delight of lying on the grass and listening above the murmur of insects to the water nagging at the sedge. So much indeed was there to beguile them that, if after sunset the Pool had not been a haunted place, they would have lingered there till nightfall. Sometimes indeed they did miscalculate the distance they had come and finding themselves likely to be caught by twilight they would hurry with eyes averted from the grey water lest the kelpie should rise out of the depths and drown them. There were men and women now alive in Nancepean who could tell of this happening to belated wayfarers, and it was Mark who discovered that such a beast was called a kelpie. Moreover, the bar where earlier in the evening it was pleasant to lie and pluck the yellow sea-poppies, listening to tales of wrecks and buried treasure and bygone smuggling, was no place at all in the chill of twilight; moreover, when the bar had been left behind and before the coastguards' cottages came into sight there was a two-mile stretch of lonely cliff that was a famous haunt of ghosts. Drowned light dragoons whose bodies were tossed ashore here a hundred years ago, wreckers revisiting the scene of their crimes, murdered excisemen … it was not surprising that the boys hurried along the narrow path, whistling to keep up their spirits and almost ready to cry for help if nothing more dangerous than a moth fanned their pale cheeks in passing. And after this Mark had to undo alone the nine gates between the Vicarage and Nancepean, though Cass would go with him as far along his road as the last light of the village could be seen, and what was more stay there whistling for as long as Mark could hear the heartening sound.
But if these adventures demanded the companionship of Cass, the inspiration of them was Mark's mother. Just as in the nursery games of Lima Street it had always been she who had made it worth while to play with his grenadiers, which by the way had perished in a troopship like their predecessors the light dragoons a century before, sinking one by one and leaving nothing behind except their cork-stands bobbing on the waves.
Mrs. Lidderdale knew every legend of the coast, so that it was thrilling to sit beside her and turn over the musty pages of the church registers, following from equinox to equinox in the entries of the burials the wrecks since the year 1702:
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