And the gorse on the hills belongs to him! 
    And if so be one fires his gorse,
    He’s out of his bed, and he mounts his horse. 
    Off he sets:  with the first long stride
    He is halfway over the mountain side: 
    With his second stride he has crossed the barrow,
    And he has you fast, has Johnnie Kigarrow!”

    Half I laughed and half I feared;
    I clutched and tugged at the strong man’s beard,
    And bragged as brave as a boy could be—­
    “So? but, you see, he didn’t catch me!”

    Fear caught hold of me:  what had I done? 
    High as the roof rose the farmer’s son: 
    How the sight of him froze my marrow! 
    “I,” he cried, “am Johnnie Kigarrow!”

    Well, you wonder, what was the end? 
    Never forget;—­he had called me “friend”! 
    Mighty of limb, and hard, and blown;
    Quickly he laughed and set me down. 
    “Heh!” said, he, “but the squeak was narrow,
    Not to be caught by Johnnie Kigarrow!”

    Now, I hear, after years gone by,
    Nobody knows how he came to die. 
    He strode out one night of storm: 
    “Get you to bed, and keep you warm!”
    Out into darkness so went he: 
    Nobody knows where his bones may be.

    Only I think—­if his tongue let go
    Truth that once,—­how perhaps I know. 
    Twloch river, and Twloch barrow,
    Do you cover my Johnnie Kigarrow?

LETTER XLIV.

Dearest:  I have been doing something so wise and foolish:  mentally wise, I mean, and physically foolish.  Do you guess?—­Disobeying your parting injunction, and sitting up to see eclipses.

It was such a luxury to do as I was not told just for once; to feel there was an independent me still capable of asserting itself.  My belief is that, waking, you hold me subjugated:  but, once your godhead has put on its spiritual nightcap, and begun nodding, your mesmeric influence relaxes.  Up starts resolution and independence, and I breathe desolately for a time, feeling myself once more a free woman.

’Twas a tremulous experience, Beloved; but I loved it all the more for that.  How we love playing at grief and death—­the two things that must come—­before it is their due time!  I took a look at my world for three most mortal hours last night, trying to see you out of it.  And oh, how close it kept bringing me!  I almost heard you breathe, and was forever wondering—­Can we ever be nearer, or love each other more than we do?  For that we should each want a sixth sense, and a second soul:  and it would still be only the same spread out over larger territory.  I prefer to keep it nesting close in its present limitations, where it feels like a “growing pain”; children have it in their legs, we in our hearts.

I am growing sleepy as I write, and feel I am sending you a dull letter,—­my penalty for doing as you forbade.