other strings in its place beside the uproar of the big fiddles, and
distinguish from both the measured noise of many feet moving as one.

He reached a place from which, himself unobserved, he could overlook
much of what he had come to see.

The bottom of the glade below him lay out in the full sunshine, as flat
and as velvety in its fresh greenness as a garden lawn. Its open expanse
was big enough to accommodate several distinct crowds, and here the
crowds were--one massed about an enclosure in which young men were
playing at football, another gathered further off in a horse-shoe curve
at the end of a baseball diamond, and a third thronging at a point where
the shade of overhanging woods began, focussed upon a centre of interest
which Theron could not make out. Closer at hand, where a shallow stream
rippled along over its black-slate bed, some little boys, with legs
bared to the thighs, were paddling about, under the charge of two men
clad in long black gowns. There were others of these frocked monitors
scattered here and there upon the scene--pallid, close-shaven, monkish
figures, who none the less wore modern hats, and superintended with
knowledge the games of the period. Theron remembered that these were the
Christian Brothers, the semi-monastic teachers of the Catholic school.

And this was the picnic of the Catholics of Octavius. He gazed in
mingled amazement and exhilaration upon the spectacle. There seemed
to be literally thousands of people on the open fields before him, and
apparently there were still other thousands in the fringes of the woods
round about. The noises which arose from this multitude--the shouts of
the lads in the water, the playful squeals of the girls in the swings,
the fused uproar of the more distant crowds, and above all the diligent,
ordered strains of the dance-music proceeding from some invisible
distance in the greenwood--charmed his ears with their suggestion of
universal merriment. He drew a long breath--half pleasure, half wistful
regret--as he remembered that other gathering in the forest which he had
left behind.

At any rate, it should be well behind him today, whatever the morrow
might bring! Evidently he was on the wrong side of the circle for the
headquarters of the festivities. He turned and walked to the right
through the beeches, making a detour, under cover, of the crowds at
play. At last he rounded the long oval of the clearing, and found
himself at the very edge of t