Chapter XXI: By the Loughside

There was nothing within reasonable distance better than the margin of the pool. Ninian spread his thick coat on the ground, and they sat down, glowing with heat, and with appetites sharpened by the keen air.

"I don't think I ever was so hungry in my life," said Olwen.

"You look twice as fit as you did when first you came to us," remarked Nin. "A little blue thing you were, with a red nose!"

"You're too complimentary!"

"And now you are what Mrs. Mountstewart Jenkinson would call 'a dainty rogue in porcelain.'"

"What! Have I ceased to be a school-marm and become a rogue?"

"I think you will, if we come skating often!"

"And meantime you have left off being a tavern clown and become a court jester!"

"That's a pretty thing to say!"

"No worse than you are always saying to me! It's mean to keep on attacking and not allow me to hit back."

"Don't you like to be a dainty rogue in porcelain?"

"I would far rather be a serviceable school-marm."

"You have been serviceable," he said, with a sudden change of tone. The change brought her heart unexpectedly into her throat. It sounded as though he were on the verge of becoming sentimental.

"Well, of course," said she hurriedly, "how could I earn a living if I were not serviceable? By the way, you promised me a sight of the Roman Wall! Where is it! I can't see it anywhere! And what is a mile-castle? Is it so called because it is always a mile away from the place where you happen to be?"

"The Wall is up on the top of that black cliff," said he, "which latter is known in the neighbourhood as Duke's Crag; but that's supposed to be a corruption of Crag Dhu, the Black Crag. No connection between the Crag and any Duke can be traced."

"It wouldn't take us long, would it, to climb up there?" asked the girl. "Is the mile-castle behind?"

"The mile-castle is in that dip about a quarter of a mile to our right. But you mustn't expect to find either it or the Wall very high, you know. The highest bit of wall remaining isn't more than eight feet, I believe, and none of the mile-castle is much higher than my head."

"Do tell me what exactly is a mile-castle?"

"There was one every mile, that is, every Roman mile, along the wall. It was a little fort in which there was a garrison of about a dozen men. At each quarter of a mile there was a smaller one, big enough to hold two or three, so that they were always near enough to call up their mates in case of a surprise. The mile-castles were usually put just where the lie of the ground needed a little extra protection."

"Excellent! This is the young man who was asking for information about the Wall from his teacher!"

He chuckled gaily. "Well, I shall be delighted to hear anything you have to say."

"Do let us go up and look," said she impulsively. "This is the only chance I shall have----"

"Go to! Why the only chance?"

"Oh, because I shall be leaving. It is no use my staying here. There isn't enough to do. I shall give warning, as you call it, next time I get my wages."

"Then let us make hay, or--or anything else we want to make, while the sun shines," he returned, rising his lazy length, and stooping to help her to her feet.

"Can we go right up the rock?" she asked. "It seems a tremendous way round."

"Yes, the steep direct way is the best, if you think you can do it. We can use my stick by way of a rope for you to hold on by. Are you likely to turn dizzy?"

"No, my head's all right."

"Then come on, and let's chance it. We must be pretty quick, however, for we have not very much time to spare."

The sky was blue, the sun clear above their heads. With their faces set to the northern wall of the cliff they saw nothing of the black clouds behind them.

Olwen had never enjoyed anything as she enjoyed that dizzy climb. Ninian left off fooling and became a guide in all respects to be desired--steady, competent, and very strong.

She followed his advice exactly, and in what seemed quite a short time he had reached the top, swung himself into a sitting posture on the verge, and reached his arms to raise her to his level.

Then, quite suddenly, when she had let go, as he held her suspended at his mercy, he said in a strained voice, unlike his own:

"Now say you believe me. Say you trust me! Do you hear? If you don't say so, I am going to let you drop."

She was used to him by now, and not at all frightened. "Don't be an idiot," said she with the utmost calm; "put me down."

"Not till you say you believe me. Say you are sure that I told you the truth, _the real, whole truth_, when I told you about me and Lily Martin the other day."

His face was close to hers, his eyes looked right into hers. They were anxious, but perfectly clear and bold. She could not meet his glance and tell him that he lied. She tried to jest: "Any Guyse, with green eyes, will tell----"

In a moment he had caught her in his left arm, and with his right hand covered her mouth to prevent her completing the quotation.

"No, don't, for God's sake," he said in agitation which she knew to be real. "Answer me just once, quite straight. Do you think I would tell you a deliberate untruth?"

"Why should you? Please set me down----"

"In a moment. This is awfully important. Listen just a second. I have never told you anything yet that isn't--quite--true. Do you believe me?"

There was an appeal in his voice that shook her. She knew that the fact that he still held her in the crook of his arm shook her also.

"I'll--I'll be far likelier to believe if you set me down and don't bully," said she, still struggling for independence.

He set her down gently upon the rock at his side. "What a little feather-weight you are," he said absently; then caught himself up with a laugh and a glance of fun. "At it again! But you know you really are! You always remind me of the Duchess in the Browning poem--

'_I have seen a white crane bigger,--_
_She was the smallest lady alive!_'

I suppose it is your Welsh blood that makes you so small-boned, isn't it?"

"Welsh?" said Olwen in surprise. "How do you know that I am Welsh? I never told you!"

He coloured suddenly and deeply, and for a moment foundered. "Oh, but didn't you tell Madam? No? Then it must have been your name. Anyone would guess you to be Welsh with such a name as Olwen."

"It is rather a give-away," said she, wondering a little it his confusion, but attributing it to his realisation of the fact that his remark amounted to an admission of his having thought a good deal about her. "I'm not so very short," said she with dignity.

He had taken out a handkerchief, and was wiping her hands--those hands upon which Sunia bestowed such care--first one and then the other in an absorbed way, as if he disliked the least hint of earth upon them. "You haven't answered me," he said after a minute; "but you do believe me you know, only you don't like to say so."

"How many times am I to tell you that I don't have any opinion about you? You're outside my scheme of the universe altogether."

"That," said he, as he rose and helped her up, "is the merest piffle, as, of course, you know. Come along if you want to see the old mile-castle. It isn't much to look at. When the weather gets better we'll go to Housesteads, and I'll show you the stone sills of the gateway, worn away with the driving in and out of chariot wheels which were no more than a hoary legend to William the Conqueror's Normans."

"Oh, isn't it incredible?" she sighed. "The wonderful world!"

"Hallo!" said he, stopping abruptly, and shading his eyes with his hand. "Is this a snowstorm that I see before me? Gee whiz, we have got to be quick!"

"What do you mean? Oh, those clouds? Why, it will be ages before they get anywhere near us."

"Don't you be so cock-sure! What a fool I was not to look at the barometer this morning! If I know my weather, it is snowing like Billy-o at this moment in the Cheviots."

"Well, I don't know how Billy-o does snow, so I'm not impressed. I see a great broad worm wriggling up over the top of this height, and slithering off down the other side, and I believe, I do believe it is the Wall itself! My Wall!"

"Oh, Wall, oh, Wall, oh, sweet and lovely Wall!" echoed Nin with a shout of laughter. "Yes, there it is, right enough, and we can run along the top of it if you like."

In another few minutes they were both on the top, running fleetly along, and gazing down at the vast natural rampart upon which great Rome founded her artificial one.

"You'll have to do with the merest peep, my lady, and then I march you off home," cried Nin as they raced along. "What a goat I was to tell you anything about it! There's nothing to see."

"Just to set my foot within the threshold and feel like Macaulay's New Zealander on the ruins of London Bridge--'Rome shall perish! Write that word in the blood that she has spilt!'--and now Rome is gone, and we are here."

"Yes," he replied, "we're here, and thank God for that!"

They paused, for they had reached the small quadrangular enclosure which had once been a mile-castle. Here the proprietors had set up a bit of iron rail, designed probably to deter visitors from the favourite pursuit of walking upon the wall itself--a process leading to gradual disintegration. They let themselves down into the castle, and stood within its boundaries.

The site had been carefully excavated, and its dimensions and plan could be clearly seen. It had once been divided, like the upper floors of the Pele, into four small chambers, each about twelve feet square. Its northern face was built against the Wall itself, and there had been a gateway leading through, designed for foot passengers only. On the south side also there had been a doorway, not very wide. In the southwest corner the farmer who now owned it had built up a small shed or shelter, using stones collected from along the Wall, and roofing with corrugated iron.

Olwen was anxious to linger and make mind-pictures of the garrison seated round their charcoal brazier, throwing dice, as once they did in Palestine at the foot of the Cross. He began to describe to her the rows of wooden huts and booths which grew up in those old days under the sheltering Wall, forming as it were one long town from east to west.

"So that one could buy tooth-brushes and writing-paper and, I suppose, postage stamps, without travelling to Hexham or Newcastle," said she mirthfully.

Then he glanced once more at the menacing north, and urged her--

"Come! For us to-day as for the old legions then, trouble cometh out of the north. Let us get down from these dizzy heights and make our way across the fell to the road. I don't want to be caught by the snow up here."

He was turning in a different direction, but she cried out that they had better go down the short way. He hesitated: "It's a bit steep down there for you."

"But it's much, much shorter."

He admitted it.

"Then let us scramble down as fast as we can. You go first, and then you can find nice holes for my feet."

After a moment's doubt he gave in, and they retraced their steps to the place where they had made the ascent of Duke's Crag. For some way down all went well, though Ninian was a little anxious, having realised, by the slipping of a jutting bit of rock beneath his hand, how keenly the late tremendous frost had acted upon the somewhat loose and scaly surface.

"Look out, Teacher, it came off in me 'and," said he lightly; and it occurred to Olwen for the first time that she now understood that nervousness always made him flippant.

Perhaps her success so far had made the inexperienced girl a little reckless. She set her foot carelessly, the ledge upon which she dropped her weight gave, and she slipped, grasping with a sudden jerk at a projecting lump above her head. The lump detached itself with a crack like a pistol shot, and came down upon her, flinging her upon Ninian, who, just below, had fortunately braced himself firmly to withstand the shock.

The loosened rock rushed on, leaping down the slope, and he heard it crash dully upon the ice below.

"You clumsy little----" he began.

Olwen neither moved nor spoke. Her head was hanging over his shoulder, her limbs seemed to trail helplessly.

"Speak!" he said chokingly. There was no answer.