For pence judiciously tendered, we had the young Pan himself for leader—­an Italian boy of sixteen, fair as a god of Greece.  He went before with the most innocent grace in the world, and looked at us over his shoulder.  He called his sister to come also, and as a stimulant he held up his penny.  But she hung back, smit with sudden maidenly modesty at the sight of two such proper young men; and so her brother danced on without her.

Looking back, we saw that she had called her mother, and now peeped out wistfully from behind the shelter of the skirt maternal.  Perhaps she regretted that she had not gone with us, for there, far ahead, was her brother skipping upon his quest.  And suddenly there was no interest in the dull farmyard and the cattle.  For that is a way of women—­to be willing too late.

As we go, we talk with the young Pan—­Henry Fenwick freely, I slowly, yet with comprehension greater than speech.

Will Pan sit down and eat with us? we ask.

Surely!  There is no doubt whatever that he will, and that gladly.  But we must wait till we come to a spring of hill-water, so that we may have the true and only apostolic baptism for our red wine.

There presently we arrive.  The place is verily an inspiration.  It is a natural well in the shadow of a great rock.  Overhead is the virgin cup rudely cut in the stone.  A shelf for sitting on while you drink, and the rocky laver brimming with clear and icy water.  Little grains of fine white sand dance at the bottom, where from its living source the pure brew wells up.  It is indeed a proper place to break bread.

Here, with Pan talking to us in a speech soft as the Italian air, we eat and are refreshed.  Pan himself willingly opens his heart, and tells us of the changes that are coming—­an Italy free from lagoon to triangle-which is to say, from Venice to Messina.  But there is much dying to be done before then.  The tears must fall from many mothers’ eyes—­from his own, who knows?  Will he fight?  Ay, surely he will fight!  And the face of Pan hardens, till one understands how he could have been so cruel one day to the reeds which grew in the river.

But the distance beckons us, and the sun draws himself upward to his strength.  We have on us the English itch for change.  The breeze comes and goes as we plunge among the groves of Virgilian ilex, and through the interstices of the trees we see on a hill-slope above us thirty great horned oxen, etched black against the sky.

Here Pan leaves us, saying farewell with tears in his woman’s eyes; with silver also in his pocket, which, to do him justice, does not comfort him wholly.  Before he goes, for love and gratitude he tells us of a rhyme with which to please the children and to cause the good wives to give us a lodging.