nted forms. They change
maybe to a field of turnips, and I have seen a farmer priding himself
on a flock of sheep that I knew were really a most merry company of
dryads and fauns in disguise. I had but to make the sign of the cross,
sprinkle some holy water upon them, and call them by their sweet secret
names, and the whole rout had been off to the woods, with mad gambol
and song, before the eyes of the astonished farmer.

It was so with Hebe. She was really a little gold-haired blue-eyed
dryad, whose true home was a wild white cherry-tree that grew in some
scattered woodland behind the old country-house of my boyhood. In
spring-time how that naughty tree used to flash its silver nakedness of
blossom for miles across the furze and scattered birches!

I might have known it was Hebe.

Alas! it no longer bares its bosom with so dazzling a prodigality, for
it is many a day since it was uprooted. The little dryad long since
fled away weeping,--fled away, said evil tongues, fled away to the town.

Well do I remember our last meeting. Returning home one evening, I met
her at the lodge-gate hurrying away. Our loves had been discovered,
and my mother had shuddered to think that so pagan a thing had lived so
long in a Christian house. I vowed--ah! what did I not vow?--and then
we stole sadly together to comfort our aching hearts under cover of the
woodland. For the last time the wild cherry-tree bloomed,--wonderful
blossom, glittering with tears, and gloriously radiant with stormy
lights of wild passion and wilder hopes.

My faith lived valiantly till the next spring. It was Hebe who was
faithless. The cherry-tree was dead, for its dryad had gone,--fled,
said evil tongues, fled away to the town!

But as yet, in the time to which my thoughts return, our sweet secret
mornings were known only to ourselves. It was my custom then to rise
early, to read Latin authors,--thanks to Hebe, still unread. I used to
light my fire and make tea for myself, till one rapturous morning I
discovered that Hebe was fond of rising early too, and that she would
like to light my fire and make my tea. After a time she began to
sweeten it for me. And then she would sit on my knee, and we would
translate Catullus together,--into English kisses; for she was
curiously interested in the learned tongue.

How lovely she used to look with the morning sun turning her hair to
golden mist, and dancing in the blue deeps of her eyes; and once when