s
honest, and my instinct was to trust her: so I nodded, and put my
finger on my lips.

"Of course," she said. "Well, you are the first since I was a little
thing, and that's fourteen hundred years ago." (You may think I opened
my eyes.) "Yes, Vitalis was the last, and he lived in the villa--they
called it so--down by the stream. You'll find the place some of these
days if you look. I heard talk yesterday that someone had got them, and
I'm told the mist was about last night. Perhaps you saw it?"

"Yes," I said, "I did, and I guessed what it meant." And I told her all
that had happened, and ended by asking if she could kindly advise me
what to do.

She thought for a moment, and then handed me a little bunch of the
leaves she held in her hand. "Four-leaved clover," she said. "I know
nothing better. Lay it on the box itself. You'll hear of them again, be
sure."

"Who are _they_?" I asked in a whisper.

She shook her head. "Not allowed," was all she would say. "I must be
going"; and she was gone, sure enough. You might suppose (as I did, when
I came to think of it) that my new sight ought to have been able to see
what became of her. I think it would, if she had gone straight away from
me; but what I believe she did was to dart round behind me and then go
away in a straight line, so that I was left looking in front of me while
she was travelling away behind me like a bullet from a gun. You need
practice with these things, and I had only been at it a couple of days.

I turned and walked rather quickly homewards, for I thought it would be
wise to protect my box as soon as possible now that I had the means. I
think it was fortunate that I did.

As I opened the garden gate I saw an old woman coming down the path--an
old woman very unlike the last. "Old" was not the word for her face:
she might have been born before the history-books begin. As to her
expression, if ever you saw a snake with red rims to its eyes and the
expression of a parrot, you might have some idea of it. She was hobbling
along with a stick, in quite the proper manner, but I felt certain that
all that was put on, and that she could have glided as swift as an adder
if she pleased. I confess I was afraid of her. I had a feeling that she
knew everything and hated everybody.

"And what," I suddenly thought, "has she been up to? If she has got at
the box, where am I? and more than that, what mischief will she and her
company work among the small people and