to brush elbows with the world, a hunger
for the woodland--in the eyes of unromantic men these things are
weaknesses. You and I know differently, but nevertheless it is best
that I seem but a poor vagrant grinding forth a hapless tune for the
coppers by the wayside."

The minstrel gazed idly at the hay-camp.

"One does not quite understand," he suggested raising handsome eyebrows
in subtle disapproval; "the negro, the hay--the curious camp?"

Diane recalled Philip's unfeeling attitude of the night before.

"A happy-go-lucky young man with a taste for hay," she said. "I know
little of him."

"One treasures one's confidence from the unsympathetic," ventured the
minstrel. "Now the young man of the hay, I take it, is intensely
practical and let us say--unromantic. Lest he laugh and scoff--" he
shrugged and glanced furtively at the girl's face. It was brightly
flushed and very lovely. The velvet dusk of Diane's eyes was sparkling
with the zest of woodland adventure. To repose a confidence in one so
spirited and beautiful was fascinating sport--and safe.

Now the minstrel found as the morning waned that he was not so strong
as he had fancied. Wherefore he lay humbly by the fire and talked of
his fortunes by the roadside. Bits of philosophy, of sparkling jest,
of vivid description, to these Diane listened with parted lips and eyes
alive with wholesome interest as her guest contrived to veil himself in
a silken web of romance and mystery.

It was sunset before the girl felt uncomfortably that he ought to go.
A little later, on her way to the van, she found a volume of Herodotus
in the original Greek which with a becoming air of guilt the minstrel
owned that he had dropped.

"Ah, Herodotus!" he murmured, smiling. "After all, was he not the
wandering, romantic father of all of us who are nomads!"

"I wonder," said a lazy voice among the trees, "I wonder now if old
Herodotus ever heard of a hay-camp."

Removing a wisp of hay from his shoe with a certain matter-of-fact
grace characteristic of him, Mr. Poynter, who had been invisible all
day, arrived in the camp of the enemy. Diane saw with a fretful flash
of wonder that he was immaculate as usual. She saw too that the
minstrel was annoyed and that he dropped the volume of Herodotus into
his pocket with a flush and a frown.

"I trust," said Philip politely, "that you are better?"

Save for a slight dizziness, the minstrel said, he was.

"And yet," urged