When I explained that I couldn’t sell he offered to compromise on two of the carved marble mantels, the library tiles, and two inlaid tables, “at double what you’d get from anybody else.”  And when I wouldn’t even let him have these trifles, he was disgusted and took no pains to conceal it.  He was rude to Alicia, who snubbed him with terrible thoroughness, a proceeding which made him call loudly for his “bill” and his car.  The last we heard of him was his bullying voice bawling at his sullen chauffeur.

“That pig,” said The Author to me, with fury, “is undoubtedly the lineal descendant of the one Gadarene swine that hadn’t decency enough to rush down the slope with the rest of the herd and drown himself.”

Busy as I was, it wasn’t over easy for me to find time to revisit that brown and sweet-smelling spot in the Forest of Arden where on a gray afternoon, I had met Nicholas Jelnik and received from him a kiss on the palm, and a broken coin.  And I wanted to go back there, as ghosts may desire to revisit the glimpses of the moon.

That is why, on the first free afternoon I had, I changed into the selfsame brown frock, put on the brown hat with the yellow quill in it, and slipped out of Hynds House alone.  It wasn’t a gray afternoon this time, but a clear, bright, sun-shiny one, all blue and gold and green, and with the pleasantest of friendly winds a-frolicking, and a pine-scented air with a pungent and a vital bite to it.

I went along the highroad for a while, crossed the weedy, ferny ditch that separated it from the fallow fields beyond, and struck into the deserted foot-path that leads to the Enchanted Wood.

It was very lonesome, very peaceful.  I could see the pine-trees I love swaying and rocking against the blue, blue sky; I could catch the low-hummed tune they crooned to themselves and the winds; I could sniff a thousand woodsy odors.  Spears of sunlight made bright blobs on the brown grass; and every littlest bush and shrub wore a shimmering halo, as you see the blessed ones backgrounded in old pictures.  There was a bird twittering somewhere; occasionally a twig snapped with a quick, secret sharpness; and once a thin brown rabbit took to his heels, right under my feet.

I stopped from time to time to sense the feel of the afternoon, to drink the air and be healed.  In a few minutes I should be within the forest and hear the little brook giggling to itself as it scurried over its brown pathway.  And then I heard—­something—­and turned.

The deep and weedy ditch, crowded with high stalks of last year’s goldenrod and fennel, edged all that pathway, draining the entire field.  Crawling snakelike through it he had followed me.  And now here he was, suddenly erect on the path behind me, looking at me with narrowed eyes under his flat forehead.

I wasn’t afraid—­at first.  Nothing like him had ever crossed my path, and I stared at him with more of disgust and aversion than terror.