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world."
    "I sometimes get that feeling when I'm here. Makes me glad to get back to town."
    "You don't like it here?"
    "A little of Crags' Height goes a long way with me. Don't know how Dominic has the strength of mind to maroon himself here year after year."
    "I don't expect Mr. Rockwood would do anything unless he wanted to."
    Mark shrugged, "What about some more coffee? I'll ring for Emily and ask her to make some fresh,"
    Aunt Ellie greeted Mark's arrival with an enthusiasm of which Barbara did nut know she was capable, and treated him with a playfully reproving but adoring man ner which she never showed to her older nephew. Mark seemed to reciprocate her affection and responded light- heartedly to her teasing, and watching the tiny figure walk round the garden on the arm of the big, sandy-haired man, Barbara grew to like Mark as much for his attitude towards his aunt as for his bland good nature. She never once saw him ruffled or in a bad temper, and although he must often have been bored with Aunt Ellie's vague chatter, he met everything that came with the same easy humour.
    He took no interest in the estate, yet seemed familiar with all the landmarks in the surrounding countryside, but it was not until one afternoon when they went for a walk that he told Barbara anything about himself.
    Their feet crunched on the drive as the dogs bounded ahead, their fronded tails waving as they barked in hoarse joy at their liberty. When they reached the mas sive iron gates Mark halted and looked back at the house, its huge dark pile silhouetted against the colour less grey sky.
    "Bleak-looking place, isn't it?" Barbara shivered. "Sometimes I feel it resents people living in it." As she spoke she could imagine Crags' Height silent and empty, the staircase deserted, the rooms with no voices to shatter their brooding stillness. Mark looked down at her reflectively. "It wasn't al ways like that, you know. When I used to stay here it was filled with people. Dominic's mother liked gaiety and every weekend there was a house-party of one kind or another."
    "I thought you seemed to know it well," she said. They turned and swung down the hill leading to the village.
    "I do," Mark replied. "My parents died when I was about six and Dominic's father had me to stay with him. He was my father's elder brother and I must say he al ways treated me like another son. Dominic and I were brought up together, sharing everything—except the ownership of Crags' Height." He paused. "He was always a strange fellow about this house—intense about everything, like most Welshmen. One gets the feeling that he loves it and loaches it at the same time."
    "You don't strike me as being intense," Barbara put in.
    Mark grinned. "That's because my mother was English. Apart from which my father was the younger brother and had no responsibilities to inherit. He knew Crags' Height would never belong to him and when Uncle Hugh married and had a son he thought no more about it."
    "Did you spend all your childhood here?"
    "Most of it. We had a tutor until we were old enough to go to prep, school, and Dominic and I were- pretty well inseparable except when he went abroad with his father. Then he went up to Bangor University and I went to Cambridge."
    "Why didn't he go to Cambridge with you?"
    "You don't know your boss, young lady—he takes his heritage seriously! When he heard I was going to Cambridge he wouldn't speak to me for a week—said if every Welshman was like me there'd be no need of a University in Wales at all."
    By this time they had reached the end of the hill, the hedgerows bare and leafless, the trees raising a tracery of black against the sky. Drifting plumes of smoke from the cottage chimneys rose into the still air and as they walked down the steep high street Mark exchanged greetings with people who recognized him.
    They came to the end of the village street and Mark halted. "Which way would you like to go? Straight on down to the sea or back up across the