"Of course, of course—if we wait long enough. It's perhaps you. You'll die yourself sometime, you know."
"Noh, I wun't. No 'n'll ivver see me die. I'll just turn into sun'th'n—a gull maybe," as one floated by on moveless wing, the very poetry of motion; and the fathomless black eyes followed it with pathetic longing.
"Cormorant more likely, I should say."
"Noh, I wun't. I don' like corm'rants. They stink. Mebbe I'll be a hawk,"—as his eye fell on one, like a brown leaf nailed against the blue sky. "Did ee hear White Horse last night?"
"I did hear a horse in the night, Johnnie, but I couldn't swear that he was a white one."
"Didn' git up an' look out?" disappointedly.
"No, I didn't. Why should I get up to look out at a horse? I can see horses any day without getting out of bed in the middle of the night."
"'Twus the White Horse of the Coupée,"—in a weird whisper.—"I heerd him start in Little Sark, and come across Coupée, an' up by Colinette, an' past this house. An' if you'd ha' looked out an' seen him, you'd ha' died."
"Good old White Horse! I'm glad I stopped in bed. Did you see him yourself now?"
"I've rid him! Yes!—an' told him where to go," with a ghoulish nod.