For a long time we sat talking with the shepherd, for he told us of many things that were strange, and some that were beautiful, and some that were wild and terrible. One of his own brothers, after an evil life, had become mad, and even now lived in caves among the higher hills, going ever on hands and feet, and cursing by day and night because he was made as one of the wild swine, that know only hunger and rage and savage sleep. He himself tended lovingly his old father, who was too frail to work, and often could not sleep at nights because of the pleasant but wearying noise the fairies made as they met on the dancing-lawns among the bracken. Our friend had not himself heard the simple people, and in a whisper confided to us that he thought the old man was a bit mazed, and that what he heard was only the solitary playing of the Amadan-Dhu, who, it was known to all, roamed the shadows between the two dusks. "Keep away from the river in the hollow," he said at another moment, "for it's there, on a night like this, just before the full moon got up, that, when I was a boy, I saw the Aonaran. An' to this day, if I saw you or any one standing by the water, it 'ud be all I could do not to thrust you into it and drown you: ay, I'd have to throw myself on my face, an' bite the grass, an' pray till my soul shook the murder out at my throat. For that's the Aonaran's doing." Later, he showed us, when we noticed it, a bit of smooth coral that hung by a coarse leathern thong from his neck. "Is that an amulet?" one of us asked. "No: it's my lassie's." We looked at the man inquiringly. "The bairn's dead thirty years agone." In the silence that followed, one of us rose, and went with the shepherd into the little room behind. When the man came back it was with a wonderful light in his face. Our comrade did not return ... but when we glanced sidelong, lo, the Soul was there, as though he had not moved. Then, of a sudden, we knew what he had done, what he had said, and were glad. When we left (the shepherd wanted us to stay the night, but we would not), the stars had come. The night was full of solemn beauty. We went down by the wood of which the shepherd had spoken, and came upon it as the moon rose. But as a path bordered it, we followed that little winding white gleam, somewhat impatient now to reach those far hills where each of us believed he would find his heart's desire, or, at the least, have that vision of absolute Truth, of absolute Beauty, which we had set out to find.