As a direct consequence of sitting on the damp moor in the mist Mavis caught one of her bad bronchial colds and was put to bed and cosseted by Aunt Nellie, and was fussed over by Jessop, and was visited by Uncle David, and had flowers sent her by Tom, and for a few days was the centre of the entire household. She was such a dear gentle little patient, and her blue eyes and dull-gold hair always looked so effective against the background of a pillow, that she invariably received much petting and spoiling when she was ill. Merle, who went through some stormy scenes when left to her own devices at school, declared that Mavis was "a lucker", and that it paid to be an invalid. She did her share of the spoiling, however; for though she might sometimes affect to be jealous, no one was more thoroughly devoted to her sister than herself. It was characteristic of Merle that she would not go to Chagmouth alone.

"I'll wait till Mavis is better and then we'll go together, thanks, Uncle David," she said decidedly, in response to all tempting offers of a run in the car. Mavis pulled round much faster at Durracombe than she would have done at Whinburn, and, though several weeks saw the doctor set off alone for Chagmouth, one Saturday arrived when he started with a pale and a rosy face beside him, and two wagging tongues keeping up an excited chatteration. The girls felt as if they had been away from the village for years. The short time of their absence had made changes, for the red pyrus japonica was in blossom on some of the houses, and daffodils and wallflowers were blooming instead of snowdrops and crocuses in the cottage gardens. It was a glorious heavenly day, one of those blue March days that are linked in our memories with young lambs and violets. They had caught the wind coming across the moor, but the Cove of Chagmouth was sheltered from it, and was calm and warm as summer.

"Just the very weather for Mavis to be out-of-doors," said Dr. Tremayne. "If Bevis can spare the time we'll ask him to take you for a walk. You ought to go and see Pixies' Cave—that's the place I was telling you about the other day, where the Antiquarian Society excavated and found so many prehistoric weapons. Bevis was there helping them. He's got one or two of the things, I believe. He must show them to you. It's only about a mile and a half to the cave if you go along the cliffs. You can manage that, Mavis?"

"Rather. I'm not a scrap ill now, and ready for anything." Bevis had completely forgiven the girls for deserting him on the former occasion. Moreover, he had kept his promise, and had made them a miniature grindstone upon which to sharpen their penknives. It turned with a handle, and was quite a neat little piece of workmanship. They welcomed it with much admiration.

"It's absolutely dinky! How could you ever manage to do it?" they asked.

"Oh, it was quite easy!" replied Bevis airily, looking gratified all the same.

He agreed at once to escort them to the cave, and directly lunch was over they started forth. This time they went in the opposite direction to the sanatorium. They climbed above the village, and struck a footpath among woods that overhung the cliffs. On this sunny March day it was like a peep of fairyland. The trees were still bare, but between the network of branches showed the brilliant blue-green of the sea below; an aspect of the scene not possible in leafy summer. The ground was spangled with little tufts of primroses, peeping from among the grass and dead leaves, as the pre-Raphaelite artists so loved to paint them in their masterpieces. Mosses, lichens, and hardy Polypody ferns grew thickly on the trees, so that grey and green were mingled with the tones of brown and gold into one soft harmony of rich colour. The air was soft, and yet had an invigorating sparkle of spring in it. Everything seemed to hold the thrill of awakening life, and the magnetic atmosphere was that of an old-time folk-tale when the world was young and all its objects were sources of wonder and worship.

The girls caught the spirit of the place and ran about like dryads in a rapture of delight, picking flowers, gazing up into the tracery of the bare branches, or peeping over edges of cliff at the waves dashing below. They were so enthralled with the wood that it was difficult to drag them any farther. Yet it was finer still when they had left the trees and walked out to the open headland. This was the grandest side of Chagmouth, and the view of steep jagged rocks and wide waters was sublime. There is a spiritual exaltation in being on the heights, else why have the greatest souls ever born ascended into mountains for their periods of meditation and transfiguration?

Bevis was a most satisfactory person to act guide, for he appreciated everything so much himself. He invariably stopped at exactly the right places and said, "There!" The boy was a keen naturalist, and was always watching the birds, poking about for nests, picking up snail shells, or making a dash after some insect specimen that he wanted. His pockets were generally full of miscellaneous objects, and he had a growing collection put by in boxes inside the tool-shed. He had been much with Mr. Barnes, the local antiquary, and had acquired a smattering of archÆological lore, enough to make him take a wild interest in the excavations which were carried on by a learned society from Port Sennen. He had himself helped to dig and to sift the gravel, and had been lucky enough to light upon quite a good find. The best of his discoveries had been sent to the County Institute, but a few objects had been private treasure trove, and lived in the museum of his pockets.

The point to which he was taking the girls was a little grassy plateau that jutted out from the sloping cliff. Nature must have designed it specially for her early children, as it was sheltered from the prevailing winds and faced the sun. Moreover, it was the outer courtyard of a large cave which shelved into the hill-side. Many thousands of years ago successive generations of the old prehistoric race, who once inhabited these islands, had lived there, and had hunted the mammoth and elk. No one would have known anything about them had they not left behind them their rude weapons and the bones that remained over from their feasts.

It was from these relics, buried under yards of gravel, that antiquarians had pieced together some idea of the life in those ancient times.

The cave was dark, and, so the girls declared, decidedly "spooky", but Bevis had brought a piece of candle and a box of matches; so they were able to explore its recesses. There was really not much to see except rugged bits of rock, and heaps of gravel, over which they stumbled in the dim flicker of their solitary candle. They were both extremely relieved when they stepped outside again into the sunshine.

"Ugh! Shouldn't have liked that for a home, thank you!" declared Merle. "I'd have lived outside if I'd been a prehistoric woman."

"How about wild beasts catching you?" asked Bevis. "You'd have been glad to fence yourself safely into the cave at night."

He was turning out the miscellaneous collection in his pockets, and now proudly produced the specimens he had found in the cave—some flint arrow-heads, a skin-scraper, and two bone needles.

"I often wish they could talk," he said, "and tell me who owned them, and what animals they killed, and what hides they scraped and sewed together into clothes. They must have seemed such treasures to the people who first made them. Mr. Barnes is going to dig again here this summer. Perhaps we shall find something more. Last June I helped him to open a mound in the field over there."

"Did you find arrow-heads and bone needles?"

"No, it belonged to the Bronze Age, and a chief was buried there. His wife was lying by his side. The skeletons were quite perfect, and their hands were clasped together. She had a little baby in her other arm. There was a necklace round her throat, and a torque on his head. They must have been grand people when they were alive. I'll show you the mound if you like to come."

Of course the girls wanted to come, and they scrambled up a steep place on to a yet more beautiful part of the headland. The tumulus stood in the midst of a rough field, like the green grassy hillock of a fairy legend. Below, with a hedge between, lay a tiny quarry, where blackthorn was breaking into blossom, and ivy trailed over the remains of an old wall. This seemed a suitable spot to sit down and eat the slices of home-baked cake that Mrs. Penruddock had sent with them. They settled themselves happily for their picnic. From the vantage-point of the wall they could see spread out before them the whole grand panorama of the Bay of Chagmouth. Away on the farther side of the harbour lay The Warren, half-hidden in woods, and higher up gleamed the slated roof and many windows of the Sanatorium.

"We're monarchs of all we survey here," laughed Merle.

"I should think this is No Man's Land on the top of the cliffs," said Mavis.

"As a matter of fact it's part of the estate that goes with The Warren," said Bevis. "Mr. Barnes had to get permission before he might excavate in the mound. And an absurd fuss they made about it, too, between Mr. Glyn Williams and the agent. They said at first he would have to write to General Talland in the West Indies."

"It seems funny to live in the West Indies when you've got all this beautiful place belonging to you here."

"Ah, I only wish it were mine! You bet I wouldn't be an absentee landlord," broke out Bevis bitterly. "It seems to me the limit that people should own things and care nothing about them. The old General hasn't been at Chagmouth for fifteen years. I don't suppose he remembers there's such a beauty spot as this where we're sitting now, even if he ever saw it. He's turned the property over to the Glyn Williams, and all the value they'd put on this scrap of hill-side would be its worth for the shooting. It's hard that things should go so unequally. There's a lot of injustice in this world. The people who care for the things ought to own them."

"Don't you think in a sense they do?" Mavis spoke slowly and hesitatingly. "What I mean is that all beautiful things belong in a way to the people who love them: old castles, and pictures, and landscapes, and everything of that sort. If you appreciate them they're yours, and nothing can ever take them away from you. This little quarry, and the sloe blossom, and the primroses, and the view over the water, are ours. They can't belong to people who've never seen them. I'm going to call it 'Blackthorn Bower', and take possession. I feel as if we'd a right to it."

"Cheerio! Here are your title deeds, 'Lady of the Bower'!" laughed Bevis, peeling a piece of bark off a tree and handing it to her as if it had been a manuscript, "if there's any dispute with the old General we'll go to law about it, and prove that we're the lineal descendants of the mound dwellers or the cave folk, and have a prior claim on the property."

"The land for the people," quoted Merle. "This patch of land certainly. The Lady of the Bower has proved it's ours. She's a regular Portia at arguing, and there isn't a Shylock who could stand against her."

"It's our joint estate then, and belongs to us three. We'll call ourselves The Triumvirate!" proclaimed Mavis. "Have you a penny in your pocket, Bevis? Merle, give me one too! Now, we'll bury these three pennies in the ground, like the Romans used to do before they began a building, and that'll mark the spot ours for ever more."

"I wish we had a building here," said Merle, producing her penny.

"Oh, so do I! A sort of ancient British hut, made of boughs and turf. Wouldn't it be priceless? We could almost imagine ourselves mound dwellers, and feel as if we were living in the Bronze Age."

"Would you really like it?" asked Bevis quickly.

"Rather!"

"Well, we'll see what can be done. No, I can't exactly promise anything; but look here! if you care to come here again next Saturday afternoon perhaps I might have a surprise ready for you. No, I shan't tell you anything about it, or it wouldn't be a surprise. You must wait and see!"

"Do whisper just a teeny-weeny hint," begged Mavis coaxingly, but Bevis was adamant.

"I don't know myself yet! Wait till next Saturday. Give me your pennies, and I'll dig a hole. Here's a foundation at any rate. Good luck to Blackthorn Bower."

Having solemnly interred the three coins, the young people regretfully remembered the time, and turned away from the lovely spot to go back to Chagmouth. For the sake of variety they went by another path, which led over the top of the headland and down on to an inland road. In the deep sheltered green lane early violets were blooming, and presently, on the banks of a little pond, they spied the first kingcups of the year. They were growing in a rather swampy place, and it would have been prudent of the girls to have let Bevis gather them for them; instead of which they both insisted upon venturing on to some very spongy ground, with the result that Mavis made a false step and plunged suddenly, well over her knees, into water. She splashed out again immediately, but the damage was done. Here was a pretty business—Mavis, newly recovered from a bad attack of bronchitis, was wet through and shivering already.

"Oh, she'll get cold!" cried Merle. "What are we to do?"

"I feel like a dr-r-r-owned r-r-r-at!" said Mavis through her chattering teeth.

"Mrs. Jarvis lives close by. She'd dry her things," suggested Bevis.

"Oh, do let us go there at once then!"

Where Mavis's health was concerned, Merle, through sad experience, was an anxious little mother. The Triumvirate hurried off post-haste in the direction of a white-washed cottage whose chimney peeped above the hedge on the opposite side of the road.

Mrs. Jarvis was a short, wizened, elderly widow woman, who had suffered badly in the battle of life and had come off with many scars. Fourteen years ago she had been the village nurse, and had been sent for on that tragic evening when poor Mrs. Hunter, helpless and speechless, lay gasping with fluttering breath on the sofa in the parlour of the King's Arms. It was Mrs. Jarvis who had performed the last offices, who had supplied what information she could to the doctor and the coroner, and had indeed been one of the principal witnesses at the inquest. It is said that misfortunes never come singly, and on the day when all Chagmouth had flocked to the churchyard to watch the stranger's funeral, Mrs. Jarvis had been overwhelmed with a trouble of her own. Her one child, a wilful headstrong lad of thirteen, had run away, and had taken with him the few savings that she had kept stored inside an old tea-pot in the cupboard. All search for him had been in vain, and it was generally supposed in the neighbourhood that he had walked to Port Sennen and gone to sea as a cabin boy in one of the many vessels that lay in the busy harbour. Certainly from that day to this his mother had had no further news of him. This grief had been the bitter culmination of many black years, and it had preyed on the poor woman's mind to such an extent that she was often strange in her manner, and indeed for a time had been an inmate of the County Asylum. She was perfectly harmless, and though she could no longer be trusted as a nurse, she fulfilled the duties of an extra postwoman and delivered letters at outlying farms. She had one unreasoning obsession. She was certain that Jerry, her boy, might come back at any moment. A little table in her kitchen was always set out ready for him, with clean cloth, tea-pot, and knife and fork. Every evening at dusk she lighted a candle, and placed it in a window to guide him home by the short cut he had been wont to take over the cliffs from the village. She was brisk and cheerful, and would talk eagerly of the lad whom she daily expected, oblivious of the fact that nearly fifteen years must have changed him almost out of recognition. People humoured her on this point, and treated her with that kindly consideration which is often meted out in country places to those who are labelled "daft".

Amongst her other work Mrs. Jarvis went weekly to scrub floors at Grimbal's Farm, so Bevis knew her well, and had no hesitation in taking Mavis to be dried at her fire. The door of the small fuchsia-covered cottage was open, and the postwoman, still in her uniform, was newly returned from her upland tramp, and was blowing sticks into a blaze under her kettle. She took the advent of a drenched visitor with the utmost calm.

"Well, Bevis! Who'd have thought of seeing you. The young lady wet! Yes, yes! Nasty thing to be wet! Very nice fire! The kettle's just on the boil! Take her things off? Yes, missy. Come with me and I'll take wet clothes off. Very dangerous to sit in wet clothes." Poor Mrs. Jarvis might be half-crazy, but she collected her scattered wits sufficiently to usher Mavis into her tiny bedroom, to lend her some dry garments, and to make her a steaming cup of hot tea.

"I can't give her his place," she murmured, glancing in doubt at the table set ready for Jerry, and beginning to twist her hands in the nervous fashion that accompanied any distress in her mind.

"No, no! She's better here by the fire," said Bevis soothingly. "I'll go out and find you some fresh wood, and then you can make a regular blazer. Don't you begin to worry! I know you're glad to do anything for Dr. Tremayne's niece, aren't you?"

"Yes, indeed! A nice gentleman—Dr. Tremayne. Very kind always when my head's bad. A very nice gentleman and all!"

By the aid of a perfect bonfire of sticks and brushwood, which Bevis foraged out of the fields, Mavis's clothes were dried at last, and the little party were able to start off on their way back to Chagmouth. They hurried along, being afraid lest Uncle David should have returned from the Sanatorium and be waiting to set off in the car for Durracombe. As they clattered down the steep steps that led from the footpath into the village, they almost ran into Gwen and Babbie Williams, who, looking charming in white serge coats and little ermine caps, were going to post letters in the pillar-box. Gwen stood still and stared in utter amazement, first at Mavis's mud-stained garments and then at Bevis. The latter raised his cap, but Gwen did not acknowledge the courtesy, and remained gazing as if absolutely petrified, while the Triumvirate, conscious of intense disapproval, scurried past in the direction of the farm.

"Why do we always happen to meet the Glyn Williams just when we're not tidy. It really is too bad," groaned Mavis.

"There's fate about it I think. I've only to lose my hair ribbon, or forget my gloves, or dirty my boots, and Gwen turns up round the corner as neat as if she'd stepped out of a bandbox. It's most fearfully aggravating. I wish to goodness they'd stay at The Warren instead of acting fashion plates in the village. I'm thoroughly cross," grunted Merle.

Bevis said nothing, though he might have added that it was not pleasant to have your civility acknowledged only with a stare. There was a curious stubborn look on the lad's dark face, such as the girls had noticed there on that first afternoon when they had been obliged to put off their appointment with him in the tool-shed. He turned abruptly into the stackyard when they reached the farm, and though, afterwards, they hunted about for him to say good-bye, they could not find him anywhere.