“Dear Gogo,” I said, “I am so thankful to you, and so sorry; and I would not have said or done what I did, if I had known it would disturb you so. Won’t you let me get up?” He scrambled to his feet--ah, fie upon the unmeant cruelty of the word!--and stood knotting his great hands, while his breast heaved stormily. “Well, I think I was mad,” he roared suddenly. “Strike me! Stamp on me! Bind me to a pillar, and let the eternal remorse batten on my vitals! Whatever the spark at my tail, it started me up like a rocket: and behold me at the end, a blackened and empty case!” He entreated me with his hands-- “Ah, the pagan sight of you! Ah, your wild hair, growing from the fern or melting into it! Ah, your face, the very flowering of a hamadryad! It wrought a frenzy in my brain. Forgive me, forgive me! And I will serve you seven times seven years, for the promise only to be godfather to your last--your Benjamin!” He sank down on the stool, and, burying his face in his hands, was silent. I thought a practical rescue of the situation best, and rising from my bed, went to bestir myself over the fire, which was burning redly. Moreover, a delectable odour had already reached my nostrils from the little caldron he had hung there, and whose contents were beginning to inspire me with a very lively curiosity. I turned to the poor sufferer. “Gogo, please, it is very sad; but if I am to go on being a hamadryad I must be fed. Gogo, what is in the pot?” He lifted his head, with a sigh. “Snipe,” he said, most tragically. “Ah! What else?” “A hare, a partridge, teal.” “O!” “Onions, potatoes, carrots.” “O--o!” “Larks, chestnuts”-- “Be quiet, lest I cry. You are the best of creatures, and I am the hungriest.” “Eat what you will. It is my _pot au feu_--nothing finished before the next is added.” “I can wait no longer. You are the hermit of hermits. Who is your commissariat-general?” “Who but the child your little friend.” “My”-- “Miss Grant.” “Patty!” He had arisen, and come across to me. “She lays it in a hollow tree, twice a week, and twice a week I go down by night and fetch it.” I stood gaping, staring at him. “Gogo! Where are we?” “In ‘Rupert’s Folly.’” “In--!” I gave a little cry. He seized me by the wrist, and dragged me towards the opened door. “O, Gogo!” I choked, struggling and resisting, “we shall be seen.” “What does it matter if we are,” he said fiercely, “since you loathe me?” I wept and fondled him, in an agony of fear. “I don’t loathe you. You are my one stay and comfort. Gogo! Will you give me back to that terror?” He fell squatting at my feet--it was his substitute for kneeling--and clasped his arms about my skirt. “Beast!” he groaned; “I neither meant nor could help it. To play upon your fears!--To taste love by deputy!--O, forgive me, forgive me!”