them
as she danced. At night sleep fled from him, and after tossing for
hours on his bed, he would get up and plunge into a deep pool that lay a
little way in the forest.

This state of things went on for some weeks, then at last chance
favoured him. One evening, as he was passing near the house where she
lived, he saw her standing with her back to the wall, trying to beat off
with her fan the attacks of a savage dog that was leaping at her throat.
Alonzo, for such was his name, sprang forward, and with one blow of
his fist stretched the creature dead upon the road. He then helped the
frightened and half-fainting girl into the large cool verandah where her
parents were sitting, and from that hour he was a welcome guest in the
house, and it was not long before he was the promised husband of Julia.

Every day, when his work was done, he used to go up to the house,
half hidden among flowering plants and brilliant creepers, where
humming-birds darted from bush to bush, and parrots of all colours, red
and green and grey, shrieked in chorus. There he would find the maiden
waiting for him, and they would spend an hour or two under the stars,
which looked so large and bright that you felt as if you could almost
touch them.

'What did you do last night after you went home?' suddenly asked the
girl one evening.

'Just the same as I always do,' answered he. 'It was too hot to sleep,
so it was no use going to bed, and I walked straight of to the forest
and bathed in one of those deep dark pools at the edge of the river. I
have been there constantly for several months, but last night a strange
thing happened. I was taking my last plunge, when I heard--sometimes
from one side, and sometimes from another--the sound of a voice singing
more sweetly than any nightingale, though I could not catch any words. I
left the pool, and, dressing myself as fast as I could, I searched
every bush and tree round the water, as I fancied that perhaps it was my
friend who was playing a trick on me, but there was not a creature to be
seen; and when I reached home I found my friend fast asleep.'

As Julia listened her face grew deadly white, and her whole body
shivered as if with cold. From her childhood she had heard stories of
the terrible beings that lived in the forests and were hidden under
the banks of the rivers, and could only be kept off by powerful charms.
Could the voice which had bewitched Alonzo have come from one of these?
Perhaps, wh