"All this, of course, came out at the inquest, where I told all I knew, and Flynn corroborated it. I saw also what Tom had told me that afternoon, how a huge goat had sparred and gambolled round him as he came home across the forest. And the verdict, as you say, perhaps, was brought in, in accordance with that. The world will be quite satisfied. I am satisfied, too, but not in that way." He was silent again a moment, and then went on. "It all hangs together," he said; "the dear Hermit was not as all of us are: he could talk to birds and beasts, and the very peace of God encompassed him. He knew, in a way we don't, that all-embracing fatherhood. I learned slowly, these weeks I was with him, what the truth of that was to him. And he used often to speak, as you know, of the grim side of Nature, of the cruelty and death, which he had turned his face from, which he called Pan, who, as the myths have it, appeared in form like a goat, to see whom was death. We had been talking of it that night, we both heard curious tramplings in the bushes, and the pungent smell of a goat. Every sensible person, considering, too, that he had seen a big goat that afternoon, would come to the conclusion that, somehow or other the brute had found its way into the garden, and had sprung on him like a wild beast, and trampled him. Then, too, he was thinking about Pan; he might have imagined when the goat appeared, that this was what he in those imaginings, if you like, which were as real to him as the sun and moon, believed to be Pan, and that he died of fright. The jury took the view that some wild goat was the cause of his death: I daresay fifty juries would have done the same. But if you ask me whether I believe that a goat, a flesh and blood goat, killed him, why I laugh at you. For what goat was that? Who saw the goat except the Hermit?" He paused again, and looked up at his mother with sudden solicitude. "Ah, dear, you are crying," he said. "Shall I not go on?" Again that gentle, loving stroking of his hand began. "Ah, my son," she said. Philip kissed the hand that stroked his. These lines were easy to read between. But if he had more to tell his mother, she had something also to tell him that he did not know yet.