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hear to it. Daniel went but once into the lion’s den.”

He sighed mightily as he thought of begging his long way through Somerset and Devon, for he was a big heavy man and lazy and short of wind; but he would not go back, though he refused to speak further of his reason for it; and Phil, though in truth he liked Martin little, was too easy-going to part thus with his companion of the road. The lad was young, and the world was wide, and it was still spring in England.

So they turned toward the hills, which were blue and purple in the setting sun, — a shepherd, did he but know it, lives in halls more splendid than a king’s, — and set forth upon their journey through the rough lands of Somerset. They went astray among the mines but found their way to Wells where, as they came out from the town, they passed a gallows, which gave Martin such a start that he stopped for neither breath nor speech until he had left that significant emblem of the law a mile behind him. They went through Glastonbury, where report has it that Joseph of Arimathea and King Arthur and King Edgar lie buried, and through Bridgewater, where to their wonder there was a ship of a hundred tons riding in the Parret. They went through Dulverton on a market day, and crossed the Dunsbrook by the stone bridge and so passed into Devon. They went on over heath and hill and through woods and green valleys until at the end of seven days from Bristol — for time and again they had lost their way, and a sailor on shore is at best like a lame horse on a rough road — they crossed the Taw at Barnstaple. Again going astray, they went nearly to Torrington before they learned their blunder and turned down the valley of the Torridge. But all things come to an end at last,