The last stone followed him into the pool; the echoes died on the hills. The spring resumed its pleasant murmur, but the tinkle of its fall was broken by the mimic waves of the pool. Save for this troubled sloshing against the banks, the slow-settling dust and the contemplative bust of the one-time centaur, no trace was left to mark the late disastrous invasion. The invader's dreamy and speculative gaze followed the dust of the trailing rope. He opened his lips twice or thrice, and spoke, after several futile attempts, in a voice mild, but clearly earnest: "Oh, you little eohippus!" The spellbound girl rose. Her hand was at her throat; her eyes were big and round, and her astonished lips were drawn to a round, red O. Sharp ears heard the rustle of her skirts, her soft gasp of amazement. The merman turned his head briskly, his eye met hers. One gloved hand brushed his brow; a broad streak of mud appeared there, over which the blood meandered uncertainly. He looked up at the maid in silence: in silence the maid looked down at him. He nodded, with a pleasant smile. "Good-morning!" he said casually. At this cheerful greeting, the astounded maid was near to tumbling after, like Jill of the song. "Er--good-morning!" she gasped. Silence. The merman reclined gently against the bank with a comfortable air of satisfaction. The color came flooding back to her startled face. "Oh, are you hurt?" she cried. A puzzled frown struggled through the mud. "Hurt?" he echoed. "Who, me?... Why, no--leastwise, I guess not." He wiggled his fingers, raised his arms, wagged his head doubtfully and slowly, first sidewise and then up and down; shook himself guardedly, and finally raised tentative boot-tips to the surface. After this painstaking inspection he settled contentedly back again. "Oh, no, I'm all right," he reported. "Only I lost a big, black, fine, young, nice horse somehow. You ain't seen nothing of him, have you?" "Then why don't you get out?" she demanded. "I believe you are hurt." "Get out? Why, yes, ma'am. Certainly. Why not?" But the girl was already beginning to clamber down, grasping the shrubbery to aid in the descent. Now the bank was steep and sheer. So the merman rose, tactfully clutching the grapevines behind him as a plausible excuse for turning his back. It followed as a corollary of this generous act that he must needs be lame, which he accordingly became. As this mishap became acute, his quick eyes roved down the canyon, where he saw what gave him pause; and he groaned sincerely under his breath. For the black horse had taken to the parked uplands, the dragging rope had tangled in a snaggy tree-root, and he was tracing weary circles in bootless effort to be free. Tactful still, the dripping merman hobbled to the nearest shade wherefrom the luckless black horse should be invisible, eclipsed by the intervening ridge, and there sank down in a state of exhaustion, his back to a friendly tree-trunk. CHAPTER II FIRST AID