How this vortex and whirling storm began, whose breath first stirred it up, it were hard to say. It had moved in widening rings for months, before Aderhold discovered how darkened was the air about him. CHAPTER X IN HAWTHORN FOREST IT was winter—a mild, bright, winter’s day—when, for the second time, he met and spoke to Joan in the forest. She was standing beneath a beech tree, in her hand a dry, fallen bough which she was brandishing and making play with as though it had been a quarter-staff. She was singing, though not in the least loudly,— “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood, And of brave Little John, Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet, Locksley and Maid Marian—’” When she saw Aderhold close to her she started violently. “Good-day,” he said. “I meant not to frighten you!” She looked at him curiously and shook her head. “No.... You did not frighten me. I am not at all frighted.” He smiled. “You say that as though you were surprised at yourself.” She looked at him again with grey eyes half-troubled, half-fearless. “It isn’t so hard to surprise yourself.... You did take that cat you gave me from the boys who were stoning her at the burned cot?” “Yes,” said Aderhold, surprised in his turn. “Why?” She stammered. “I heard them talking, and though I believe not such things, I—I—” “What things?” She was silent for a moment, then faced him with courage. “I have heard talk that you don’t believe what other people believe, that you deny things that are in the Bible, and that maybe you practise sorcery there in the Oak Grange.... And—and some one once told me that—that people like that had always familiars which went mostly like little animals such as a cat or small dog, or sometimes a bird or a frog,—and that—and that if they offered to give you such a thing for a gift and—and you took it, you signed yourself so to the Evil One.... But—but I do not believe such things. They are against all goodness and—and good sense.” She ended somewhat breathlessly; for all her courage, which was great, her heart was beating hard. “You are right,” said Aderhold. “Such things are against all goodness and good sense—and they do not happen.... I was going to see a sick man, and passing by the burned cottage, I heard the cat crying, and went and took her from the boys. She’s naught but just your fireside cat. And I am a solitary man who has no familiar and knows no magic.” He drew a heavy, oppressed breath. “I did not know that there was any such talk.... It is miserable that there should be.” He stood leaning against a tree, with half-shut eyes. Old fears came over him in a thick and sickening wave.