"In thy humility thou hidest something from me," said the Hermit, and he fixed his eyes thoughtfully on the young man's face. "Nay, I have told thee all that is worth the telling." "Then hast thou always lived this life?" the Hermit asked. "Ever since I was a small lad--such a one as the little maid in front, and she will be in her seventh year, or it may be a little older. Before me was my father goose-herd; and he taught me the windings of the journey to the city, and the best resting-places, and the ways of geese, and the meaning of their cries, and what pleaseth them and serveth flesh and feather, and how they should be driven. And now, in turn, I teach the child, for there be goose-girls as well as men." "Is she then thy young sister, or may it be that she is thy daughter?" "Neither young sister nor daughter is she," replied the Herd, "and yet in truth she is both sister and daughter." "Wilt thou tell me how that may be?" asked the Hermit. "It is shortly told," said the Herd. "Robbers broke into their poor and lonely house by the roadside and slew father and mother and left them dead, but the babe at the breast they had not slain, and this was she." "Didst thou find her?" asked the Hermit. "Ay, on a happy day I found her; a feeble little thing bleating like a lambkin forlorn beside its dead dam." "And thy wife, belike, or thy mother, reared her?" "Nay," said the Herd, "for my mother was dead, and no wife have I. I reared her myself--my little white gooseling; and she throve and waxed strong of heart and limb, and merry and brown of favour, as thou hast seen." "Thou must have been thyself scantly a man in those days," said the Hermit. "Younger than to-day," replied the Herd; "but I was ever big of limb and plentiful of my inches." "And hath she not been often since a burthen to thee, and a weariness in the years?" "She hath been a care in the cold winter, and a sorrow in her sickness with her teeth--for no man, I wot, can help a small child when the teeth come through the gum, and she can but cry ah! ah! and hath no words to tell what she aileth." "Why didst thou do all this?" asked the Hermit. "What hath been thy reward? Or for what reward dost thou look?" The Goose-herd looked at him blankly for a moment; then his face brightened. "Surely," he said, "to see her as she goes on her way, a bright, brown little living thing, with her clear hair and glad eyes, is a goodly reward. And a goodly reward is it to think of her growth, and to mind me of the days when she could not walk and I bore her whithersoever I went; and of the days when she could but take faltering steps and was soon fain to climb into my arms and sit upon my neck; and of the days when we first fared together with the geese to market and I cut her her first hazel stick; and in truth of all the days that she hath been with me since I found her."