re Marc'antonio and Stephanu
had made a couch of fern and some heather for him under the chestnut
boughs. The sight of the heather gave me an idea, and I walked back
to where, at the end of the chestnut wood, a noble clump of it grew,
under a scarp of rock where the pines broke off. With my knife I cut
an armful of it and returned to the hut, pausing on my way to gather
some strings of a creeper which looked to be a clematis and
sufficiently tough for my purpose. My next step was to choose and
cut a tolerably straight staff of ilex, about five feet in length and
close upon two inches thick. While I trimmed it, a blackbird began
to sing in the undergrowth behind the hut, and, listening, my ears
seemed to catch in the pauses of his song a sound of running water,
less loud but nearer and more distinct than the murmur of the many
rock-streams that tinkled into the valley. I dropped my work for a
while and, passing to the back of the hut, found and followed through
the bushes a foot-track--overgrown and tangled with briers, but still
a track--which led me to the water. It ran, with a murmur almost
subterranean, beneath bushes so closely over-arched that my feet were
on the brink before I guessed, and I came close upon taking a bath at
unawares. Now this stream, so handy within reach, was just what I
wanted, and among the bushes by the verge grew a plant--much like our
English osier, but dwarfer--extremely pliant and tougher than the
tendrils of the clematis; so, that, having stripped it of half a
dozen twigs, I went back to work more blithely than ever.

But for fear of disturbing Nat I could have whistled. It may even be
that, intent on my task, I did unwittingly whistle a few bars of a
tune: or perhaps the blackbird woke him. At any rate, after half an
hour's labour I looked up from my handiwork and met his eyes, open,
intent on me and with a question in them.

"What am I doing, eh? I am making a broom, lad," I held it up for
him to admire.

"Where is she?" he asked feebly.

"She?" I set down my broom, fetched him a pannikin-ful of milk, and
knelt beside him while he drank it. "If you mean the Princess
Camilla, she has gone back to her mountain, leaving us in peace."

"Camilla?" he murmured the word.

"And a very suitable name, it seems to me. There was, if you
remember, a young lady in the Aeneid of pretty much the same
disposition."

"Camilla," he repeated, and again but a little above his breath.