But it was not the will of God that I should warn my mother that day; for even as I ran, threading my way among the scattered boulders and whin bushes of the lower slopes, I came upon that which surprised me almost as greatly as the shooting itself. Right in my path a little girl was sitting on a green mound like a deserted ant hillock: She had long yellow hair, and a red cloak was about her, with a hood to it, which came over her head and partly shaded her brow. A wooden pail had been placed carefully on the heather at her feet. Now, what with the perturbation of my spirits and my head being full of country tales of bogles and elves, at the first glance I took the maid for one of these, and would have avoided and given her a wide berth as something much less than canny. But she wiped her eyes with her little white hand, and as I looked more closely I saw that she had been crying, for her face was rubbed red, and her cheeks all harrowed and begrutten with tears. So at that I feared no more, but went nearer. She seemed about seven or eight, and very well grown for her age. “Why do you cry, little maid?” I said to her, standing before her in the green path. For a while she did not answer, but continued to sob. I went near to comfort her, but she thrust her hand impatiently out at me. “Do not touch me, ragged boy,” she said; “it is not for herd laddies to touch little ladies.” And she spoke the words with such mightily offended dignity that on another occasion I would have laughed. Then she commanded herself and dried her eyes on her red cloak. “Carry the can and come with me to find my father,” she ordered, pointing imperiously with her finger as if I had been no better than a blackamoor slave in the plantations. I lifted the wooden pail. It contained, as I think, cakes of oatmeal with cheese and butter wrapped in green leaves. But the little girl would not let me so much as look within. “These are for my father,” she said; “my father is the greatest man in the whole world!” “But who may your father be, little one?” I asked her, standing stock still on the green highway with the can in my hand. She was daintily arranging the cloak about her like a fine lady. She paused, and looked at me very grave and not a little indignant. “That is not for you to know,” she said, with dignity; “follow me with the pail.” So saying she stalked away with dignified carriage in the direction of the hill-top. A wild fear seized me. One of the two men I had seen fleeing might be the little girl’s father. Perhaps he into whose back--ah! at all hazards I must not let her go that way. “Could we not rest awhile here,” I suggested, “here behind this bush? There are wicked men upon the hill, and they might take away the pail from us.”