“What?  Tell me, Phil dear, how or where?”

“By the end of the great big pond; and he threw up his arms, and made a horrid grin.”  The boy trembled and hid his face against her.

“But go on, Phil.  He can’t hurt you, you know.  Do tell me.  Where were you?”

“I was sliding on the ice.  Grandpapa was ever so long talking to Bill Shepherd, and looking at the men cutting turnips, and I got cold and tired, and ran about with Cousin Sedley till we got to the big pond, and we began to slide, and the ice was so nice and hard—­ you can’t think.  He showed me how to take a good long slide, and said I might go out to the other end of the pond by the copse, by the great old tree.  And I set off, but before I got there, out it jumped, out of the copse, and waved its arms, and made that face.”

He cowered into her bosom again and almost cried.  Anne knew the place, and was ready to start with dismay in her turn.  It was such a pool as is frequent in chalk districts—­shallow at one end, but deep and dangerous with springs at the other.

“But, Phil dear,” she said, “it was well you were stopped; the ice most likely would have broken at that end, and then where would Nana’s little man have been?”

“Cousin Sedley never told me not,” said the boy in self-defence; “he was whistling to me to go on.  But when I tumbled down Ralph and grandpapa and all did scold me so—­and Cousin Sedley was gone.  Why did they scold me, Nana?  I thought it was brave not to mind danger—­like papa.”

“It is brave when one can do any good by it, but not to slide on bad ice, when one must be drowned,” said Anne.  “Oh, my dear, dear little fellow, it was a blessed thing you saw that, whatever it was!  But why do you call it Pere—­Penny Grim?”

“It was, Nana!  It was a little man—­rather.  And one-sided looking, with a bit of hair sticking out, just like the picture of Riquet-with-a-tuft in your French fairy-book.”

This last was convincing to Anne that the child must have seen the phantom of seven years ago, since he was not repeating the popular description he had given her in the morning, but one quite as individual.  She asked if grandpapa had seen it.

“Oh no; he was in the shed, and only came out when he heard Ralph scolding me.  Was it a wicked urchin come to steal me, Nana?”

“No, I think not,” she answered.  “Whatever it was, I think it came because God was taking care of His child, and warning him from sliding into the deep pool.  We will thank him, Phil.  ’He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.’” And to that verse she soothed the tired child till he fell asleep, and she could lay him on the settle, and cover him with a cloak, musing the while on the strange story, until presently she started up and repaired to the buttery in search of the old servant.

“Ralph, what is this Master Philip tells me?” she asked.  “What has he seen?”