"Sit down, little daughter," said the Student. He drew her beside his knee, with her head on his arm. "I will tell you now what I can. The old man gave me a sort of hint. He did not really see, for the lamp was the other way; I fancy he guessed. I wanted to test what he said to me. I have tested it now with my hammer; it all agrees. I am absolutely certain that no harm has come to the Urchin. But I can do nothing for him myself. And I must not even tell you what I think; for if I do it ruins everything. All I may tell you is this, that you are the only person who can do anything. You will have to do it all yourself and by yourself, little daughter. I believe you have ways and means of your own of finding out. Are you going through with it, Fiona?" "Of course I am, daddy," she said. "How can I do anything else? If only I knew what it is I have to do to find him--how to begin even." "I cannot even tell you that," said the Student. But his fingers played with the copper bangle on her wrist. And out of some dim corner of subconsciousness she seemed to hear a small voice which said "If you can't get what you want by beginning at the top you must start again at the bottom." Her father, with his learning, was the top; the bottom . . . ? Fiona went to bed less miserable than she had expected. CHAPTER V THE OREAD Fiona was out long before breakfast next morning, digging furiously in her garden. Not many minutes passed before she was rewarded by a glint of something yellow in a shovelful of earth, and there was the centipede. "You dear creature," she said, and caught it up quickly before it could wriggle away. "How polite we are this morning," said the centipede, swelling with conscious pride. "I suppose we want something." Fiona's mind was far too completely taken up with her one object to notice or resent any insinuations. "Yes, I do," she said. "You told me that if I could not get what I wanted by beginning at the top I must start again at the bottom. I can do nothing from the top this time, so I've come to you." "Flattered, to be sure," said the centipede. "How frank we are." "Please don't be cross," said Fiona, humbly. "I am only doing what you told me to do." "Bless you, child, I'm not cross," said the centipede. "I'm a philosopher." "Don't philosophers get cross?" asked the girl. "Never," said the centipede. "And when they do they call it something else. What's the matter with me is, that I've sprained my seventh ankle on bow side, counting from the tail. Don't say you're sorry, for you're not. Anyone can see you're not." "You are horrid to-day," said Fiona. "And the other day you were so nice." "That's what makes me such a charming companion," said the centipede. "You never know what to expect. So I never pall." "I want to know where the Urchin is, and how I am to find him," said Fiona.