from the dark, blurred doorway in the wall of the washhouse
there emerged a dark figure which went flitting away among the trees,
while after it someone called in a sharp, incisive whisper:

"Do not forget. You MUST come."

"Oh, I shall be only too glad!"

"Very well. In the morning the lame woman shall call upon you. Do you
hear?"

And as the woman disappeared from view the other person sauntered
across the garden, and scaled the fence with a clatter.

That night I could not sleep, but, until dawn, lay watching the burning
forest as gradually the weary moon declined, and the lamp of Venus,
cold and green as an emerald, came into view over the crosses on the
Prince's Church. Indeed was the latter a fitting place for Venus to
illumine if really it had been the case that the Prince and Princess
had "passed their lives in kindly, unchanging love"!

Gradually, the dew cleared the trees of the night darkness, and caused
the damp, grey foliage to smile once more with aniseed and red
raspberry, and to sparkle with the gold of their mildew. Also, there
came hovering about us goldfinches with their little red-hooded crests,
and fussy tomtits in their cravats of yellow, while a nimble, dark,
blue woodpecker scaled the stem of an apple tree. And everywhere,
yellow leaves fluttered to earth, and, in doing so, so closely
resembled birds as to make it not always easy to distinguish whether a
leaf or a tomtit had glimmered for a moment in the air.

Gubin awoke, sighed, and with his gnarled knuckles gave his puffy eyes
a rub. Then he raised himself upon all-fours, and, crawling, much
dishevelled with sleep, out of the watchman's hut, snuffed the air (a
process in which his movements approximated comically to those of a
keen-nosed watch-dog). Finally he rose to his feet, and, in the act,
shook one of the trees so violently as to cause a bough to shed its
burden of ripe fruit, and disperse the apples hither and thither over
the dry surface of the ground, or cause them to bury themselves among
the long grass. Three of the juiciest apples he duly recovered, and,
after examination of their exterior, probed with his teeth, while
kicking away from him as many of the remainder as he could descry.

"Why spoil those apples?" I queried

"Oh, so you are NOT asleep?" he countered with a nod of his
melon-shaped cranium. "As a matter of fact, a few apples won't be
missed, for there are too many of them about. My own father it was that
pla