s dead so we shan't use him
for bait, or whether the ale was too much for him. At any rate, he's
looking far from well." And the Bishop peered anxiously into the treacle
tin.

So the search began for the ideal mate for Charles Augustus. He was laid in
state on a large burdock leaf, where he stretched himself warily enough in
the fervent heat of the sun. The Seraph, quick as a robin, was the first to
pounce upon a large, but active dew-worm, which, he announced, was
Ernestine.

We made an excited little group around the burdock, as The Seraph, flushed
with pride, deposited her beside the lonely Charles. She glided toward him.
She touched him. The effect was electrical. Charles Augustus, after one
violent contortion, hurled himself from the burdock, and, before we could
intercept him, disappeared into a bristling forest of grass blades.

"He's gone! He's gone!" wailed The Seraph. "He's wun away fwom her!"

But, even as he spoke, the agile Ernestine leapt lightly from the trembling
leaf in hot pursuit. Green spears bent to open a way for her; dizzy gnats
paused in their droning song, feeling in the ether the tremor of the chase;
bees fell from the heart of honey-sweet flowers, and lay murmuring and
booming in the grass.

They were gone. An ant had mounted the burdock leaf, and, careless of the
drama that had just been enacted, sought eagerly among the crevices for
provender. The Bishop spoke first.

"I think she'll get him," he said musingly. "She's got a sort of cave-woman
look, and she has no petticoats to impede her."

"Ess fay," assented Granfa, "her'll get him, and hold him fast too, I'll be
bound. A terr'ble powerful worm."

We stood in silence for a space, our eyes fixed on the ground picturing
that chase through dim subterranean passages, smelling of spring showers;
Charles Augustus, wasted, febrile, panting with agitation; Ernestine,
lithe, ardent, awful in her purpose.

We were still pensive when we retraced our steps across the meadow. The
Bishop and Harry and The Seraph resumed their fishing, but Angel and I
preferred to be on the grass beside Granfa, while he told us tales of old
smuggling days in Devon and Cornwall, where his little cutter had slipped
round about the delicate yet rugged coast, loaded with brandy and bales of
silk from France, guided by strange red and blue lights from the shore; and
where solemn cormorants kept darkly secret all they saw when they sailed
aloft at dawn.

IV

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