They travelled on, by villages and hill-sides, by moors and by roads. The trees flamed with autumn, and the rose-hips were turning red. At last they drew up in a grassy track which ran through an immense wood, where the sighing of the air in the fir-branches rose and fell in little gusts, and grey-blue wood-pigeons went flapping away down the vistas of stems. Maggie had never imagined such a place, and when the camp was set out and she lay down, tired, to sleep, she promised herself that, if she had a free moment on the morrow, she would go and see more of it. It was the next afternoon that her chance came, and off she set, looking back now and then, to make sure of finding her way home. How tall the bracken was! The bramble, that in woods keeps its living green almost into the winter, trailed over the path, and there were regiments of table-shaped toadstools, crimson and scarlet and brown. The rabbits fled at her step, diving underground into unseen burrows, and the male-fern stood like upright bunches of plumes. She was so much delighted by all this that she went on, and on, until the sound of a voice singing to a stringed instrument made her stand still to listen. Not far off was another camp, much like the one she had left. There were several tents, and people were moving about; but the music came from close by, on the other side of an overturned fir whose roots stood up like wild arms. She stole up and peeped round the great circle of earth which the tree had torn out with it in its fall, and in which ferns and rough grass had sown themselves. She _was_ surprised! On his face in the moss lay Dan, his elbows on the ground, his chin in his hands. His rabbit-skin cap was pulled over his eyes, and the gold rings which, like his brother, he wore in his ears gleamed against his dark neck. A girl sat near him, playing on a little stringed instrument, such as Maggie had never seen before. Her voice reminded her of the wood-pigeons, and the twang of the strings as she struck them was both sharp and soft at once. The blue of her eyes and the pale pink colour of her cheeks made Dan look almost like an Indian by contrast with her. She had ceased singing, but Maggie kept as still as possible in hopes of hearing some more. “It’s a good thing I left Alfonso at home,” she thought; “he would have never stayed quiet. I won’t breathe, and perhaps she’ll begin again.” Dan was silent too, though he never took his eyes off his companion’s lips. Soon she touched the strings again and played a few notes that sounded like a whisper. “This is called ‘The Wind in the Broom,’” she said: “‘Wind, wind, in the forest tall, Do you stir the broom where my lass is waiting? Pale lass, in the witch’s thrall— For the witch is by, and she may not call. (O the long, long days that my lass is waiting!) Gold broom, with your flowers in bloom, Wave,’ says the lad: ‘it is time for mating.’