ary thing about it was that three
times in each day it increased and decreased with regular rise and
fall. One could lie beside it and watch its measured movements.
Everybody from far and near came to see it, even the grand people
from the villas. But Marcus, coming in the early morning or evening,
had almost never met anyone there and had grown to feel that the spot
was his own. In the dusk or at dawn it often seemed to him as if a
lovely lady, with eyes such as his mother might have had, came up
out of the spring and laid smooth, cool hands on his face. Because
the Goddess of Gifts had become associated in his mind with the first
day he could remember in his early childhood--a radiant and merry
day--he had come to identify with her this Lady of the Spring, who
alone gave romance to the harsher, soberer years that followed his
father's death. To-day Marcus could have sworn she smiled at him
before she disappeared, as the water receded after the gushing flow
which he had come just in time to watch. He was rising from his knees
when his eye fell upon a strange, green gleam upon the wet rock. For
a moment he thought it was the gleam of a lizard's back, but as he
took the little object into his hand he realised that it was hard,
and inert, and transparent. Even in the dusk he could see the light
in it. It almost burned in his hand. He felt sure that it was a gift
from his Lady, but he did not stop to think what he could do with
it. He was filled with happiness just in looking at it. It was the
most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he could take it to his
mother and it would make her smile. Full of joy, he hurried homeward.
Even on ordinary occasions he loved the end of summer days. His
grandfather would go to sleep and cease saying strange things, and,
after he and his mother had finished the evening tasks in house and
court-yard and sheepfold, they would sit for a while together in the
warm doorway, and she would tell him stories of his father and of
many other people and things. Sometimes when he leaned against her
and her voice grew sweet and low he forgot he was a man and a shepherd.

To-night this did not happen, although the air was sweet with roses,
and the stars were large and bright. Marcus had shown his mother the
green marvel and told her how the Lady of the Spring had brought it
out to him from her secret recesses. She had caught her breath and
turned it over and over, and then she had put her arms close r