CHAPTER XI.
THE GUIDE TO GETHIN.
It is the spring-time, that time of all the year when those "in city pent" desire most to leave it, if only for a day or two, and breathe the air of the mountain or the sea; the time when the freshest incense arises from the great altar of Nature, and all men would come to worship at it if they could.

Even the old, who so far from the East have traveled that they have well-nigh forgotten their priesthood, feel the sacred longing; in their sluggish blood there still beats a pulse in spring-time, as the sap stirs in the ancient tree; but the young turn to the open fields with rapture, and drink the returning sunbeams in like wine.

To draw breath beneath the broad sky is to them an intoxication, and the very air kisses their cheek like the red lips of love.
With his face set ever southward or westward, Richard Yorke has traveled afoot for days, nor yet has tired; neither coach nor train has carried him, and all the luggage that he possesses is in the knapsack on his back, to which is strapped his sketch-book, like a shield.

He is striding across a heath-clad moor, with stony ridges, and here and there a distant mine-chimney--a desolate barren scene enough, but with sunshine, and a breeze from the unseen sea.

It is classic ground, for here, or hereabouts, twelve centuries ago, was fought "that last weird battle in the west," wherein King Arthur perished, and many a gallant knight, Lancelot, or Galahad, may have pricked across that Cornish moor before him on a less promising quest than even his.