the only boy employed on the farm, a towheaded,
wizen-faced yokel, was visibly at work on a potato clearing half-way up
the nearest hill-side, and Mortimer, when questioned, knew of no other
probable or possible begetter of the hidden mockery that had ambushed
Sylvia's retreat. The memory of that untraceable echo was added to her
other impressions of a furtive sinister "something" that hung around
Yessney.

Of Mortimer she saw very little; farm and woods and trout-streams
seemed to swallow him up from dawn till dusk. Once, following the
direction she had seen him take in the morning, she came to an open
space in a nut copse, further shut in by huge yew trees, in the centre
of which stood a stone pedestal surmounted by a small bronze figure of
a youthful Pan. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, but her
attention was chiefly held by the fact that a newly cut bunch of grapes
had been placed as an offering at its feet. Grapes were none too
plentiful at the manor house, and Sylvia snatched the bunch angrily
from the pedestal. Contemptuous annoyance dominated her thoughts as
she strolled slowly homeward, and then gave way to a sharp feeling of
something that was very near fright; across a thick tangle of
undergrowth a boy's face was scowling at her, brown and beautiful, with
unutterably evil eyes. It was a lonely pathway, all pathways round
Yessney were lonely for the matter of that, and she sped forward
without waiting to give a closer scrutiny to this sudden apparition.
It was not till she had reached the house that she discovered that she
had dropped the bunch of grapes in her flight.

"I saw a youth in the wood to-day," she told Mortimer that evening,
"brown-faced and rather handsome, but a scoundrel to look at. A gipsy
lad, I suppose."

"A reasonable theory," said Mortimer, "only there aren't any gipsies in
these parts at present."

"Then who was he?" asked Sylvia, and as Mortimer appeared to have no
theory of his own, she passed on to recount her finding of the votive
offering.

"I suppose it was your doing," she observed; "it's a harmless piece of
lunacy, but people would think you dreadfully silly if they knew of it."

"Did you meddle with it in any way?" asked Mortimer.

"I--I threw the grapes away. It seemed so silly," said Sylvia,
watching Mortimer's impassive face for a sign of annoyance.

"I don't think you were wise to do that," he said reflectively. "I've
heard it said that the Wood Gods a