dancing!" he cried, his voice choking, and he sprang up
despite his pains. "Don't speak to me, dame, of singing and dancing.
You're old, like the withered branch of a tree, but did you not see
with your old eyes, and hear with your old ears? Did you not see her
come up the green hillside with singing and dancing? Oh, yes, my
cherry's in flower, like a crown for a bride, and the spring is all in
movement, and the birds are all in song, and she--she came up the
hillside with singing and dancing."

"I saw," said the crone, "and I heard. I'm not so old, young shepherd,
that I do not remember the curse of youth."

"What's that?" he said moodily.

"To bear the soul of a master in the body of a slave," said she; "to be
a flower in a sealed bud, the moon in a cloud, water locked in ice,
Spring in the womb of the year, love that does not know itself."

"But when it does know?" said Young Gerard slowly.

"Oh, when it knows!" said she. "Then the flower of the fruit will leap
through the bud, and the moon will leap like a lamb on the hills of the
sky, and April will leap in the veins of the year, and the river will
leap with the fury of Spring, and the headlong heart will cry in the
body of youth, I will not be a slave, but I will be the lord of life,
because--"

"Because?" said Young Gerard.

"Because I will!"

Young Gerard said nothing, and they sat together in a long silence in
the darkness, and time went by filling the sky with stars.

Now as they sat the hilltop once more began to waver with shadows and
voices, but this time the shadows came on heavy feet and weary, and the
voices were forlorn. One feebly cried, "Hola!" And round the belt of
trees straggled the rout that had left them an hour or so earlier. But
now they were sodden and dejected, draggled and woebegone, as sorry a
spectacle as so many drowned rats.

"Fire!" moaned one. "Fire! fire!"

"Who's burning?" said Young Gerard, and got quickly on his feet; but he
did not see the two he looked for.

"None's burning, fool, but many are drowning. Do we not look like
drowned men? How shall we ever get back to Combe Ivy, and warmth and
drink and comforts? Would we were burning!"

"What has happened?" the boy demanded.

"We went in search of the ferry," he said, "but the ferry was drowned
too."

"We couldn't find the ferry," said a second.

"No," mumbled a third, "the river had drunk it up. Where there were
paths there are brooks, and where there were mea