ters, which had no business to be growing here in
the spring. Among the young wheat the poppies were flaming--red-coat
officers of the Sower of Tares, with flaunting feather leading on to the
inquisition of fires, when the reapers edge their keen sickles and
fall-to, and the tares are separated from the wheat.

For pence judiciously tendered, we had the young Pan himself for
leader--an Italian boy of sixteen, fair as a god of Greece. He went
before with the most innocent grace in the world, and looked at us over
his shoulder. He called his sister to come also, and as a stimulant he
held up his penny. But she hung back, smit with sudden maidenly modesty
at the sight of two such proper young men; and so her brother danced on
without her.

Looking back, we saw that she had called her mother, and now peeped out
wistfully from behind the shelter of the skirt maternal. Perhaps she
regretted that she had not gone with us, for there, far ahead, was her
brother skipping upon his quest. And suddenly there was no interest in
the dull farmyard and the cattle. For that is a way of women--to be
willing too late.

As we go, we talk with the young Pan--Henry Fenwick freely, I slowly,
yet with comprehension greater than speech.

Will Pan sit down and eat with us? we ask.

Surely! There is no doubt whatever that he will, and that gladly. But we
must wait till we come to a spring of hill-water, so that we may have
the true and only apostolic baptism for our red wine.

There presently we arrive. The place is verily an inspiration. It is a
natural well in the shadow of a great rock. Overhead is the virgin cup
rudely cut in the stone. A shelf for sitting on while you drink, and the
rocky laver brimming with clear and icy water. Little grains of fine
white sand dance at the bottom, where from its living source the pure
brew wells up. It is indeed a proper place to break bread.

Here, with Pan talking to us in a speech soft as the Italian air, we eat
and are refreshed. Pan himself willingly opens his heart, and tells us
of the changes that are coming--an Italy free from lagoon to
triangle-which is to say, from Venice to Messina. But there is much
dying to be done before then. The tears must fall from many mothers'
eyes--from his own, who knows? Will he fight? Ay, surely he will fight!
And the face of Pan hardens, till one understands how he could have been
so cruel one day to the reeds which grew in the river.

But the distance beckon