hilltop, and Daphne, sitting with closed eyes, felt the touch of two
hands upon her own.

"Did you understand?" asked a voice that broke in its tenderness.

She nodded, with eyes still closed, for she dared not trust them open.
He bent and kissed her hands, where the tears had fallen on them, then,
turning, called his sheep. Three minutes later there was no trace of
him or of them: they had vanished as if by magic, leaving silence and
shadow. The girl climbed the hill toward home on San Pietro's back,
shaken, awed, afraid.

CHAPTER XII

If Bertuccio had but shown any signs of having seen her companion of
yesterday, Daphne's bewilderment would have been less; but to keep
meeting a being who claimed to belong to another world, who came and
went, invisible, it would seem, when he chose, to other eyes except her
own, might well rouse strange thoughts in the mind of a girl cut off
from her old life in the world of commonplace events. To be sure, the
shepherd Antoli had seen him, but had spoken of him voluntarily as a
mysterious creature, one of the blessed saints come down to aid the
sick. The beggar woman had seen him, but had fallen prostrate at his
feet as in awe of supernatural presence. When the wandering god had
talked across the hedge the eyes of Giacomo and Assunta had apparently
been holden; and now Bertuccio, whose ears were keen, and whose eyes,
in their lazy Italian fashion, saw more then they ever seemed to,
Bertuccio had been all the afternoon within a stone's throw of the
place where the god had played to her, and Bertuccio gave no sign of
having seen a man. She eyed him questioningly as they started out the
next morning on their way to the ruins of some famous baths on the
mountain facing them.

There was keenness in the autumn air that morning, but the green slopes
far and near bore no trace of flaming color or of decay, as in fall at
home; it was rather like a glimpse of some cool, eternal spring. A
stream of water trickled down under thick grass at the side of the
road, and violets grew there.

"San Pietro!" said Daphne, with a little tug at the bridle. The long
ears were jerked hastily back to hear what was to come. "I know you
disapprove of me, for you saw it all."

The ears kept that position in which any one who has ever loved a
donkey recognizes scathing criticism. Daphne fingered one of them with
her free hand.

"It is only on your back that I feel any strength of mind," she