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 spruces dappled her body; she stopped as if shot; he came forward, humble and adoring, thinking to crush into this moment, within these arms, all that mortal beauty, the _ignis fatuus_ of romance. His lips were parted. He seemed now to have her with her back against a solid wall of rock outcropping, green-starred; but next instant she had slipped into a cleft where his big shoulders would not go. Her eyes shone like crystals in that inviting darkness. "What can I do for you?" said Peter, voicelessly. Day Rackby pinched her shoulders back, leaned forward, and drew a mischievous finger round her throat. * * * * * On that night Jethro stole more than one look at the girl while she was getting supper. Of late, when she came near him, she adopted a beloved-old-fool style of treatment which was new to him. She was more a woman than formerly, perhaps. He did not understand her whimsies. But still they had talked kindly to each other with their eyes. They communed in mysterious ways--by looks, by slight pressures, by the innumerable intuitions which had grown up, coral-wise, from the depths of silence. But this intercourse was founded upon sympathy. That once gone, she became unfathomable and lost to him, as much so as if visible bonds had been severed.-- A certain terror possessed him at the waywardness she manifested. Evidently some concession must be made. "Come," he said, turning her face toward him with a tremulous hand. "I will make you a little gift for your birthday. What shall it be?" She stood still--then made the very gesture to her bosom and around her neck, which had already sent Peter scurrying landward. The movement evoked a deadly chill in Rackby's heart. Was the past, then, to rise against him, and stretch out its bloodless hands to link with living ones? That sinister co-tenant he had seen peering at him through the blue eyes would get the better of him yet. Conscious of his mood, she leaped away from him like a fawn. A guilty light was in her eye, and she ran out of the house. Rackby followed her in terror, not knowing which way to go in the lonely darkness to come up with her. In his turn he remembered the man who had tried to keep wild foxes on Meteor.