no thicker
than a man's thumb, which grew up in racks and created a dense
blackness, its edges pierced by quivering shafts of the sun, some of
which, as if by special providence, fell between all the outer
saplings, and struck far in. A certain dream sallowness was manifested
in that sunlit glimpse. The air was quiet. Minutest things seemed to
marshal themselves as if alone and unobserved, so that it was strange to
spy them out.

"She is not here," he thought. His footfall was nothing on the soft
mold. Portly trunks of the hemlocks began to bar his way. The thick
shade entreated secrecy; he stood still, and saw his dryad, a green
apparition, kneeling at the foot of a beech tree, and looking down. In
the stillness, which absorbed all but the beating of his heart, he heard
the dry tick, tick of a beech leaf falling. Those that still clung to
the sleek upper boughs were no more than a delicate yellow cloud or
glowing autumnal atmosphere suffusing the black bole of the tree with a
light of pure enchantment. He was surprised that anything so vaporous
and colorful should come from the same sap that circulated through the
bark and body of the thick tree itself. But then he reflected that,
after all, the crown and flame of Sam Dreed's life was Day Rackby.

Had she, perhaps, descended from that yellow cloud above her? Deep-water
Peter had a moment of that speechless joy which comes when all the doors
in the house of vision are flung open at one time.

His feet sank unheeded in a patch of mold. He saw now that her eye was
on the silent welling of a spring into a sunken barrel. She had one hand
curled about the rim. The arm was of touching whiteness against that
cold, black round, which faithfully reflected the silver sheen of the
flesh on its under parts. Red and yellow leaves, crimped and curled, sat
or drifted to her breath in the pool, as if they had been gaudy little
swans.

Suddenly the sun sent a pale shaft, tinctured with lustrous green,
through the hemlock shades. This shaft of light moved over the forest
floor, grew ruddy, spied out a secret sparkle hidden in a fallen leaf,
shone on twisting threads of gossamer-like lines of running silver on
which the gloom was threaded, and, last of all, blazing in the face of
that fascinating dryad, caused her to draw back.

Peter, as mute as she, stretched out his arms. She darted past him in a
flash, putting her finger to her lips and looking back. The light
through the tiny