"He retrieves as well as he shoots. Shall we go to him and see whether
it's quail?"

"Another child," said Dion.

He still had his arm round her shoulder.

"Why did you come here?" he asked.

"To look at the evening coming to me over the wilderness. But he made me
forget it for a moment."

Dion was staring at her now.

"I believe a child could make you forget anything," he said.

"Let's go to him."

The gold of the evening was strengthening and deepening. The vast view,
which was the background to the child's little figure, was losing its
robe of green and of blue, green of the land, blue of the sea, was
putting on velvety darkness and gold. The serpentine river was a long
band of gold flung out, as if by a careless enchanter, towards the
golden sea in which Zante was dreaming. Remote and immense this land
had seemed in the full daytime, a tremendous pastoral deserted by
men, sufficient to itself and existing only for its own beauty. Now it
existed for a child. The human element had caused nature, as it were,
to recede, to take the second place. A child, bending down to pick up a
shot quail, then straightening up victoriously, held the vast panorama
in submission, as if he had quietly given out the order, "Make me
significant." And Rosamund, who had stolen away to meet the evening, was
now only intent on knowing whether the shot bird was a quail or not.

It was a quail, and a fat one.

When they came to the boy they found him a barefooted urchin, with
tattered coarse clothes and densely thick, uncovered black hair growing
down almost to his fiery young eyes, which stared at them proudly. There
was a wild look in those eyes never to be found in the eyes of a dweller
in cities, a wild grace in his figure, and a complete self-possession in
his whole bearing. The quail just shot he had in his hand. Another was
stuffed into the large pocket of his jacket. He pulled it out and showed
it to them, reading at a glance the admiration in Rosamund's eyes. Dion
held out a hand to the boy's gun, but at this his manner changed, he
clutched it tightly, moved a step or two back, and scowled.

"He's a regular young savage," said Dion.

"I like him as he is. Besides, why should he give his gun to a stranger?
He knows nothing about us."

"You're immense!" said Dion, laughing.

"Let's have the quail for our dinner."

"D'you expect him to give them to us without a stand-up fight and
probably bloodshed? For he's armed, unfo