"Oh, dey boff dere, jemplem, but de young lady is de mad pusson. She bin dere afore I come--years an' years an' years--oh, ebber so long 'go. Dis pou' lady, she want to kill peoples wid knives, and de ole womans, she watch her dat she no get out to kill. De ole woman's not a mad pusson, jemplem; oh no, dat all wrong. She watch de odder. You no go near dat Pixy House, jemplem," ended the landlord earnestly, "or dat young lady, she kill you boff, dead as coffin-lids." Haskins felt disgusted. He desired to find Fairyland, and it seemed as though his search would end in discovering a lunatic asylum. "What is the lunatic's name?" he asked. "Mavis Durham, I tink, an' de ole womans, she called Bellaria!" "Funny names," mused Tod, "and rather pretty. Mavis means a thrush, I fancy. But Bellaria?" Gerald recalled a charming book of Italian folklore, which he had read some months before. "Bellaria was the Etruscan dawn goddess, or the goddess of flowers, I forget which," he remarked; "strange that any one in a secluded Devonshire village should be called so. H'm! Is this old woman an Italian, Geary?" "I do not know, sah," replied the man promptly. "I no go to dat Leegarth, no, never, never. And you no go too, jemplem. Dat Mavis lady hab de knife in you if you go dere." "Homicidal mania," said Tod learnedly and cheerfully. Haskins shuddered; it seemed terrible to think that the owner of that silvery voice, who had sent so delightfully quaint a message, should be a dangerous lunatic not responsible for her actions. When the landlord took his departure he made an observation, rather to himself than to his friend. "The message was sane enough," he said, thereby contradicting his first impression, when Geary spoke of the lunacy. "Well, I don't know," answered Macandrew doubtfully, "all that fairy business and talk of not being able to read or write seems queer. I suppose you'll chuck the adventure, now that you know this?" "Probably!" said Haskins evasively, so that Tod should not worry him. But in his heart he had a longing to probe the matter deeper.