But the children would not have it like that at all. They flung themselves on him in a heap, and got upon his back and about his neck and rumpled his hair, declaring that he was the best old man that ever was, and he must tell them about the red necklace: till, growling a little, but very glad to be beguiled, Noche went on to say there was a necklace of red stones so splendid that every one of them was a little more splendid than the next one. Almost before he had begun and before Herman and I had heard anything louder than the unmeaning forest murmurs, we saw the children rise to attention, and scatter suddenly, with gay little splutters of laughter like the noise of water spilled along the ground. They disappeared down the trails that ran darkling among the rooted columns of the trees. There was a certain dismay I thought on Noche’s face as he turned back to his work, perceiving that I had listened, and not sure how much I had understood. He began to talk to us at once about his work, as though that might have been the object of our attention. With his hand he reached out furtively behind him and destroyed all the patterns in the dust. Still I found my mind going back to the story with some insistence. Up to that time I had seen no metal in the camp but some small pieces of hammered silver and simple tools of hard iron, and no ornaments but shells and berries. But there had been a relish in old Noche’s telling that hinted at reality. I remembered the pattern which he had pondered so secretly under the cypress trees, and it came into my mind in an obscure way, without my taking any particular notice of it, that this might be the pattern of the necklace of red stones. I had not time to think further then, for the sound to which the children had answered was the returning hunt and the Outliers coming toward us on the trail. It was always so that they came together about the time that the blue haze and the late light rayed out long level bars across the hills. They would be awake and about at whatever hour pleased them, and take their nooning in whatever place. Through the days there would scarcely be so much seen of them as a woman beating fiber between two stones by a brook, or a man cutting fern on a steep slope. So still they were by use, and so habituated to the russet earth and the green fern and the gray stone, that they could melt into it and disappear. Though you heard close about you low-toned talk and cheerful laughter, you could scarcely, unless they wished it, come bodily upon them.