ish night. The call of a bugle floated out. "England!"
he prayed; "God be about you!" A little sound answered from across the
grass, like an old man's cough, and the scrape and rattle of a chain. A
face emerged at the edge of the house's shadow; bearded and horned like
that of Pan, it seemed to stare at him. And he saw the dim grey form
of the garden goat, heard it scuttle round the stake to which it was
tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor to its' domain.

He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room, next
the nursery. No voice answered his tap. It was dark, but he could see
her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her hands.

"Nollie!"

She answered without turning: "Such a lovely night, Daddy. Come and
look! I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants. But
it is his night, isn't it? He ought to be running and skipping in it:
it's such a shame to tie things up. Did you never, feel wild in your
heart, Daddy?"

"Always, I think, Nollie; too wild. It's been hard to tame oneself."

Noel slipped her hand through his arm. "Let's go and take the goat and
skip together on the hills. If only we had a penny whistle! Did you hear
the bugle? The bugle and the goat!"

Pierson pressed the hand against him.

"Nollie, be good while I'm away. You know what I don't want. I told you
in my letter." He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more. Her face
had its "fey" look again.

"Don't you feel," she said suddenly, "on a night like this, all the
things, all the things--the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon has
a big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and the
goats and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us--escaped? Oh! Daddy,
why is there a war? And why are people so bound and so unhappy? Don't
tell me it's God--don't!"

Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song he
had been reading aloud that afternoon--

"O for a deep and dewy Spring,
With runlets cold to draw and drink,
And a great meadow blossoming,
Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
To rest me by the brink.
O take me to the mountain, O,
Past the great pines and through the wood,
Up where the lean hounds softly go,
A-whine for wild things' blood,
And madly flies the dappled roe,
O God, to shout and speed them there;
An arrow by my chestnut hair
Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear