“Why don’t you go and play with Wild Thyme?  She doesn’t mind the heat.  Every one else is staying quiet till sundown.”

Wild Thyme was a happy thought, and Eric walked away in search of her.  But she was in the very last place he would have thought to look on such a scorching day, and that is how he missed her.  She was lying full length on the hot burnt grass in the field at the Forest’s edge, loving the heat and sunshine, which covered her like a mantle.  If Eric had seen her it is probable he would not have known her or stopped to look twice.  He would have thought her just a little patch of the flower that is named for her.

So he wandered on and on, looking high and low and all about for her, and he went deeper and deeper into the Forest.  The deeper he went the cooler it became, for the forest roof kept out the sunshine.  The light grew dimmer and dimmer too.  Eric had never been so far in before and everything was strange to him.

He saw no Forest People except a little brown goblin who peered at him from some underbrush and then scuttled away into the darkness of denser brush.  Eric had never seen a goblin before, but he had no fear of goblins, and so this one did not bother him at all.  He heard others scuttling and squeaking, and one threw a chunk of gray moss at him.  He stopped and picked it up and threw it back with a laugh in the direction it had come from.

“Come out and play, why don’t you?” he called.  “I know where there’s a fine swimming pool.”  But there was no answer to his invitation.  Instead there was sudden and utter silence.  He was disappointed, for he did want a playmate, and he had almost given up looking for Wild Thyme.

After walking for a long while he came at last to one of the windings of the Forest stream, and gratefully stepped into the shallow, clear water, dark with shadows.  His feet were burning, and his head was hot.  So he drank a long drink of the cold, delicious water, ducked his head, and finally washed his face.  Then he waded on with no purpose in mind now but just to keep his feet in the water.

It was so he came to the deepest place; where not even Ivra had ever been.  It was almost cool there, and more like twilight than early afternoon.  And right in the deepest place, in a nest of smooth leaves, with his feet in the water, lay Wild Star.  When Eric first caught sight of him he thought he was asleep, for his wings were lying on the leaves half folded and dropped, and his knees were higher than his head.  But when Eric went close enough to see his eyes he knew that he was very wide awake, for they were wide open, watchful and intent,—­and purple like the early morning.  Such wide-awake eyes were startling in such a sleepy, still place.  Eric expected him to spread his wings in a flash and dart away.  But the wings stayed half open, purple shadows on the leaves, and Wild Star did not even raise his head.  Only his eyes greeted Eric.