Mr. Taylor had gone to a garden-party at the Castle, Caermaen, and had made such fun of the bishop’s recent address on missions to the Portuguese, that the Gervases and Dixons and all who heard him were quite shocked and annoyed.  And, as Mrs. Meyrick of Lanyravon observed, his black coat was perfectly green with age; so on the whole the Gervases did not like to invite Mr. Taylor again.  As for the son, nobody cared to have him; Mrs. Dixon, as she said to her husband, really asked him out of charity.

“I am afraid he seldom gets a real meal at home,” she remarked, “so I thought he would enjoy a good wholesome tea for once in a way.  But he is such an unsatisfactory boy, he would only have one slice of that nice plain cake, and I couldn’t get him to take more than two plums.  They were really quite ripe too, and boys are usually so fond of fruit.”

Thus Lucian was forced to spend his holidays chiefly in his own company, and make the best he could of the ripe peaches on the south wall of the rectory garden.  There was a certain corner where the heat of that hot August seemed concentrated, reverberated from one wall to the other, and here he liked to linger of mornings, when the mists were still thick in the valleys, “mooning,” meditating, extending his walk from the quince to the medlar and back again, beside the moldering walls of mellowed brick.  He was full of a certain wonder and awe, not unmixed with a swell of strange exultation, and wished more and more to be alone, to think over that wonderful afternoon within the fort.  In spite of himself the impression was fading; he could not understand that feeling of mad panic terror that drove him through the thicket and down the steep hillside; yet, he had experienced so clearly the physical shame and reluctance of the flesh; he recollected that for a few seconds after his awakening the sight of his own body had made him shudder and writhe as if it had suffered some profoundest degradation.  He saw before him a vision of two forms; a faun with tingling and prickling flesh lay expectant in the sunlight, and there was also the likeness of a miserable shamed boy, standing with trembling body and shaking, unsteady hands.  It was all confused, a procession of blurred images, now of rapture and ecstasy, and now of terror and shame, floating in a light that was altogether phantasmal and unreal.  He dared not approach the fort again; he lingered in the road to Caermaen that passed behind it, but a mile away, and separated by the wild land and a strip of wood from the towering battlements.  Here he was looking over a gate one day, doubtful and wondering, when he heard a heavy step behind him, and glancing round quickly saw it was old Morgan of the White House.

“Good afternoon, Master Lucian,” he began.  “Mr. Taylor pretty well, I suppose?  I be goin’ to the house a minute; the men in the fields are wantin’ some more cider.  Would you come and taste a drop of cider, Master Lucian?  It’s very good, sir, indeed.”