Beech-stems rose in stately columns all about him. The floor was red and brown mosaic, the roof a tracery of leaves intertwined with light. Eastward the sun flashed as through a window. Close by a wood-pigeon was praying.

Out of the aisle once again into the glare.

Now the Downs lay behind him, barren and dun. On his left-front the rounded bosom of another beech-wood rose, in its midst a single chestnut already rusting. Across the valley, behind a ridge, a blunt church-tower and yellow-lichened roofs peeped. On the hill beyond, a windmill cocked up against the sky.

He paid little attention, making straight for the flag of his country.

The cottage stood about a quarter of a mile away, conspicuously solitary in the greensward, the Union Jack brave above it.

The boy approached, wary but swift. Out here on the open plain there was no cover. He was exposed as a fly on a sheet of paper. Still things couldn't be worse--he comforted himself with that most comfortable of thoughts.

Some two hundred yards from the cottage a ruined wall ran across the greensward. Behind it the boy took cover and spied.

The cottage was very small; yet, small as it was it was grim to a degree. The flint in rows, tier upon tier, grinned at him fiercely, reminding him of a dog showing its teeth. The colour of steel, the rows of set teeth, the shaggy roof of thatch, the flag ruffling it from the chimney, all bespoke the same sturdy fighting character. Indeed it was so small, and yet so truculent, that Kit laughed to see it.

Chained there a dumb watch-dog on the threshold of its country, it seemed to be saying as it crouched--

"You can all go to sleep: I'm watching."

Kit crossed the wall, and almost expected to hear the cottage growl.

Warily he approached. As he did so, the warrior aspect of the cottage grew upon him. It was less a cottage than a tiny fort. There were only three windows, one on each side the door, and a dormer. The lower windows though latticed were cross-barred; and the door of massive oak, iron-studded, was heavy enough for a castle. Through it, ajar, he caught the gleam of arms.

Certainly this was no peasant's cottage. What was it then?--a signal- station?--

There was no flag-staff, no signal-tackle.

Some lonely smuggler's hold?--not likely: for there was the flag.

Could the flag be a decoy?

There was nothing for it but to go and see.

He stole forward with noisy heart.

The cottage crouched; the sycamores behind it rustled; and the wind that stirred the sycamores brought to him the sound of a voice.

He stopped, fingering his dirk.

Friend or enemy?

The voice was that of a man, deeply melodious without being exactly musical, and came from beyond the cottage somewhere by the clump of sycamores behind.

It was humming a tune, and a tune the boy knew well. Holding his breath, and listening with his heart, the boy could distinguish the words--

_Jesu, Lover of my Soul_.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MAN WITH THE SWORD

I

Those familiar words, so unexpected in that strange place, smote the boy's heart.

A thousand memories surged in on him.

His lips trembled. A very little, and he would have fallen on his knees.