o expertly that he scarcely splashed up
the water around him. Then his dark, dripping head rose in sight, his
glittering arm thrust up, and he swam vigorously to shore. He climbed
the rock for another dive. These actions he repeated in pure sport and
joy in life so often that his little spectator became dizzy with
watching.

At length he had enough of it and stooped for his discarded garments.
These he carried to a more sheltered spot and rapidly put on, the child
still wide-eyed and wondering, for indeed he had much to occupy his
attention.

He had two arms, two legs, a whole face with eyes, nose, mouth, chin,
and ears, complete. He could see, for he had glanced about him as he
dressed. He could speak, for he sang loudly. He could hear, for he had
turned quickly at the whir of pigeon-wings behind him. His skin was
smooth all over, and nowhere on it were the dark scarlet maps which the
child found so interesting on the arms, face, and breast of the burned
man. He did not strangle every little while, or shiver madly, and scream
at a sound. It was truly inexplicable, and therefore terrifying.

The child was beginning to whimper, to tremble, to look wildly about for
his mother, when the young man observed him.

"_Hullo!_" he cried eagerly, "if it isn't a child!"

He came forward across the foot-bridge with a most ingratiating smile,
for this was the first time that day he had seen a child and he had been
thinking it remarkable that there should be so few children in a valley,
where, when he had travelled that way five years before, there had been
so many he had scarcely been able to find pennies for them. So he cried
"Hullo," quite joyously, and searched in his pockets.

But, to his amazement, the bullet-headed little blond boy screamed out
in terror, and fled for protection into the arms of a hurriedly
approaching young woman. She embraced him with evident relief, and was
lavishing on him terms of scolding and endearment in the same breath,
when the traveler came up, looking as if his feelings were hurt.

"I assure you, Madam," said he, "that I only meant to give your little
boy these pennies." He examined himself with an air of wonder. "What on
earth is there about me to frighten a child?" he queried plaintively.

The young peasant-woman smiled indulgently on them both, on the child
now sobbing, his face buried in her skirt, and on the boyish, perplexed,
and beautiful young man.

"It is because he finds the Her