between us and the sea.

"I will give you another chance," he said.

Thrice that night, my dreams being troubled, I awoke and stretched
myself to see Billy pacing grimly in the moonlight between us and the
gateway, tholing his penance. I know not what aroused me the fourth
time; some sound, perhaps. The dawn was breaking, and, half-lifted
on my elbow, I saw Billy, his musket still at his shoulder, halt by
the gateway as if he, too, had been arrested by the sound. After a
moment he turned, quite casually, and stepped outside the gate to
look.

I saw him step outside. I was but half-awake, and drowsily my eyes
closed and opened again with a start, expecting to see him back at
his sentry-go. He had not returned.

I closed my eyes again, in no way alarmed as yet. I would give him
another minute, another sixty seconds. But before I had counted
thirty my ears caught a sound, and I leapt up, wide awake, and
touched my father's shoulder.

He sat up, cast a glance about him, and sprang to his feet.
Together we ran to the gateway.

The voice I had heard was the grunting of the hogs. They were
gathered about the gateway again, and, as before, they scampered from
us up the glade.

But of Billy Priske there was no sign at all. We stared at each
other and rubbed our eyes; we two, left alone out of our company of
six. Although the sun would not pierce to the valley for another
hour, it slanted already between the pine-stems on the ridge, and
above us the sky was light with another day.

And again, punctual with the dawn, over the ridge a far voice broke
into singing. As before, it came to us in cadences descending to a
long-drawn refrain--_Mortu, mortu, mortu!_

"Billy! Billy Priske!" we called, and listened.

"_Mortu, mortu, mortu!_" sang the voice, and died away behind the
ridge.

For some time we stood and heard the hogs crashing their way through
the undergrowth at the head of the glade, with a snapping and
crackling of twigs, which by degrees grew fainter. This, too, died
away; and, returning to our camp, we sat among the baggage and stared
one another in the face.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOW BY MEANS OF HER SWINE I CAME TO CIRCE.

"So saying I took my way up from the ship and the sea-shore.
But on my way, as I drew near through the glades to the home of
the enchantress Circe, there met me Hermes with his golden rod,
in semblance of a lad wearing youth's bloom on his lip and