“She brought my son safe out of the Three Sicknesses,” he declared.  “Mind your trade, Catcher of Lively Ones!” Then bending over the cage, with solicitude, he began gently to fan the lark.  As Heywood and the girl paused beside him, he glanced up, and smiled gravely.  “I give my pet his airing,” he said; and then, quickly but quietly, “When you reach the town, do not pass through the West Quarter.  It is full of evil-minded persons.  Their placards are posted.”

A shrill trio of naked boys came racing and squabbling, to offer grasshoppers for sale.

“We have seen no placards,” replied Heywood.

“You will to-morrow,” said the owner of the lark, calmly; and squatting, became engrossed in poking a grasshopper between the brown, varnished splints of the cage.  “Maker of Music, here is your evening rice.”

The two companions passed on, with Flounce timidly at heel.

“You see,” Heywood broke out.  “Warnings everywhere.  Now please, won’t you listen to my advice?  No telling when the next ship will call, but when it does—­”

“I can’t run away.”  She spoke as one clinging to a former answer.  “I must stand by my dream, such as it used to be—­and even such as it is.”

He eyed her sadly, shook his head, and said no more.  For a moment they halted, where the path broadened on a market-place, part shade, part luminous with golden dust.  A squad of lank boys, kicking miraculously with flat upturned soles, kept a wicker ball shining in the air, as true and lively as a plaything on a fountain-jet.  Beyond, their tiny juniors, girls and boys knee-high, and fat tumbling babies in rainbow finery, all hand-locked and singing, turned their circle inside out and back again, in the dizzy graces of the “Water Wheel.”  Other boys, and girls still trousered and queued like boys, played at hopscotch, in and out among shoes that lay across the road.  All traffic, even the steady trotting coolies, fetched a lenient compass roundabout.

“Lucky Hand, Lucky Hand!  Allow me to pass,” begged a coffin-maker’s man, bent under a plank.  “These Long-Life boards are heavy.”

“Ho, Lame Chicken!” called another, blocked by the hop-scotch.  He was a brown grass-cutter, who grinned, and fondled a smoky cloth that buzzed—­some tribe of wild bees, captured far afield.  “Ho, Lame Chicken!  Do not bump me.  They will sting.”

He came through safely; for at the same moment the musical “Cling-clank” of a sweetmeat-seller’s bell turned the game into a race.  The way was clear, also, for a tiny, aged collector of paper, flying the gay flag of an “Exalted Literary Society,” and plodding, between two great baskets, on his pious rounds.  “Revere and spare,” he piped, at intervals,—­ “revere and spare the Written Word!”

All the bright picture lingered with the two alien wayfarers, long after they had passed and the sun had withdrawn from their path.  In the hoary peace of twilight,—­