as just the
colour of a sweating sorrel horse.

Sophy went down to the pasture behind the stable. There were cattle
grazing there--a fine black Angus bull, and his harem of forty young
heifers. But she was not afraid of them--they were all very gentle, the
black Pasha as well as his wives.

The field hollowed in the middle, and a little dark-red path coiled
through the soaked green. Sophy dipped under the pasture-bars, and went
slowly forward, looking to right and left, for the cool, fleshlike
glisten of fungi.

The bull was grazing on a hill at the far end of the field. His
splendid, black silhouette stood out against the grey wrack of cloud.
Half of his harem grazed near. The other half had discreetly withdrawn
to that part of the field where Sophy was now walking. One lovely little
heifer, black and soft of pelt as a black Angora cat, regarded her
musingly out of lustrous, still eyes that were heavy as with sorrow.
Sophy went up to her ... put out her hand, saying: "Coo ... co-o-o...."

The heifer let her stroke her forehead, her ears--let the slim, quick
hand run along her sides, play with her glossy pelt. "You
sweetheart!..." said Sophy.

She was more like a calm, friendly dog than a cow. Sophy finally gave
her a kiss between her tranquil, melancholy eyes, and continued on her
quest for mushrooms.

The wind was higher than ever now. It blew in squally gusts. Clouds were
sagging dark in the southwest. The sun winked in and out like the light
of a great pharos.

Sophy found her first mushroom--small, but a beauty. It nestled low in
the grass on its plump, naked leg. Its round, white top was faintly
browned like a well-cooked meringue. Then she found another, enormous--a
real prize, it seemed. But something about it was _too_ perfect--_too_
white. She nipped it out of its green bed, and looked at the gills. They
were snowy white. Its slender leg was cased in a fine, white-silk
stocking that was "coming down."

"Oh," said Sophy, looking queerly at the too-lovely creature, "how very
like you are to some other mistakes of mine!... And yet ... if I ate you
... you would cure them all," she ended quizzically.

She threw the false mushroom away. It lay, pale and corpse-like, in the
wet grass. It was so like damp, dead flesh that Sophy shivered.

Now the wind began really to tussle with her. It blew in wild,
_whoorooshing_ blasts. The thickets seethed. The old orchard on the hill
above made a harsh rattling with