"I can't tell you much," said the shore lark, "but one sometimes picks up things, hopping about, and I heard you say treasure. If you mean the Venetian ship, don't start without consulting the finner. He is very old, and I believe that he knows everything that happens in this loch." "I don't really mean that," said Fiona. "That's half a jest. I mean my own search, the search for the treasure of the Isle of Mist." "We have all heard of it," said the shore lark, "and we all know that you cannot find it by looking for it. All I can tell you is this: the curlews have a tradition that the last man who found it went up a hill. That is what they tell each other when they call in the spring; and I believe they know." "They are like the spirits of the hills themselves," said Fiona. "Tell me why it is I can understand you." "I have no idea," said the shore lark. "I am only a little bird, and I don't know very much. I chanced speaking to you because I wanted worms." The girl slipped across into the bookroom. "Daddy," she said, "come back out of the second century, and tell me why I can understand the shore lark." The Student looked up with a patient smile in far-away eyes. "It isn't time to come back yet," he said. "And I have not fully grasped your meaning. You appear to refer to some conversation with some bird. There are precedents, of course. For instance, the philosopher Empedocles, having been a bird himself in a former life, remembered their speech; he ended by leaping into AEtna. Siegfried also, having bathed in the blood of Fafnir, followed the voice of a bird of the wood; he ended by losing his love and his life. There was once a sailor who took the advice of a parrot, and was hanged. Birds are light-minded, as the poet Aristophanes discovered; and it would seem that little good comes of talking to them." "My shore lark is a darling," said Fiona. "And I don't intend to be hanged." "That," said the Student, "is as Providence pleases. One never knows, as my poor ancestor said when he fell into a bear-trap and found the bear there before him." "O daddy," said the girl, "did he really? And what happened?"