Florian followed the brook. Florian went hillward, walking upon what seemed a long-ruined roadway. As he went upstream, the brook was to his left hand: to his right was the hillside thick with trees. Florian, whose familiarity with rural affairs was limited, was perforce content to recognize among these trees the maples, the oaks, the pines and the chestnuts. “Only, I should by every precedent, now that I go to inevitable destruction, be observing everything with unnatural vividness,” he reflected: “and to have about me so many familiar looking but to me anonymous trees and bushes makes my impression of the scenery quite unbecomingly vague.” Midges danced vexatiously about his face, and now and again he slapped at them without gaining the least good. So much of the ruined roadway had collapsed into the brook, in disorderly jumbles of stones and clay and splintered slate, that what remained was very awkward to walk on: your right foot was always so much higher up the hill than your left. All was peculiarly still this afternoon: it startled you, when, as happened once or twice, a grasshopper sprang out of your way, rising from between your feet with vicious unexpected whirrings. That did not seem wholly natural, in April. Florian came at last to a log hut beside three trees. Here then was the hermitage of Holy Hoprig, wherein Florian was to encounter the unpredictable. Florian regarded this hut with disfavor. He had never thought to be destroyed in such an unimpressive looking building. He shrugged, he loosened Flamberge in the scabbard, he went forward, and he pushed open the door. “Now if only,” he reflected, “I had the height and the imposing appearance of Raoul!” Florian made the most of every inch; and entered with the bearing becoming to a Duke of Puysange. The hut was unoccupied, save that in one corner was a cage painted brown; and inside this sat, upon a red silk cushion, a large gander. “Do not disturb me,” said this bird, at once, “for I have had quite enough to upset me already.” Florian for an instant stayed silent and somewhat confused. For this evidently was not the saint’s hermitage, and a talking gander seemed not wholly natural. Then Florian recollected that Morven had always been the home of sorcery. So Florian replied, with great civility, that he had not meant to intrude, but merely happened to be passing. And Florian then talked with this gander, who told of the quite disgusting scene he had witnessed when a woman, riding upon a magic staff, had come into the hut, and had there been delivered of a child. “Children are not usually acquired so,” said the gander, “for as a rule, a stork brings them, and that is a much nicer method.” “But where,” said Florian, “is now this honorarium?” “I do not know what that means,” the bird replied, “but I do know that if it means anything objectionable it has almost certainly been in here to-day to annoy me.”