As I sat and gazed from the dark room through a large old window, which was swung open on heavy hinges to allow the sap-scented breeze to drift in and fan the fire of lingering winter, out into an old garden with brick-outlined walks and climbing bare rose vines upon which was beginning to be poured the silver enchantment of a young moon, Uncle Cradd, in his deep old voice, which was like the notes given out by an ancient violin, began to read a chapter from his old Book which began with the exhortation, “Let brotherly love continue,” and laid down a course of moral conduct that seemed so impossible that I sat spellbound to the last words, “Grace be with you all.  Ahmen.”

Then I knelt beside father, with old Rufus close behind our chairs, and was for the first time in my life lifted on the wings of prayer and carried off up somewhere I hadn’t been before.  As Uncle Cradd’s sonorous words of love and rejoicing over our return rolled forth in the twilight, I crouched against father’s shoulder, and I think the spirit of my Grandmother Craddock, whom I had heard indulging in a Methodist form of vocal rejoicing which is called a shout, was about to manifest itself through me when I was brought to earth and to my feet by a long, protracted, and alarmed appeal sent forth in the voice of the Golden Bird.

“Keep us and protect us through the night with Your grace.  Ahmen!  Why didn’t you put those chickens out of the way of skunks and weasels, Rufus, you old scoundrel,” rolled out Uncle Cradd’s deep voice, dropping with great harmony from the sublime to the domestic.

Then, with Rufus at my heels, I literally flew through the back door of the house towards the sound of distress that had come from that direction.  In front of a rambling old barn, which was silvered by the crescent that hung over its ridge-pole, stood the chariot, and at its door, with Mr. G. Bird in his arms, I saw that man Adam.

“He didn’t recognize my first touch,” came across the moonbeams in a voice as fluty as the original Pan’s, and mingled with friendly chuckles and clucks from the entire Bird family as they felt the caress of long hands among them.  I was so ruffled myself that I felt in need of soothing; so I came across the light and into the black shadow of the old coach.

“Oh, I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come!” I exclaimed.

After my ardent exclamation of welcome to Pan I stood still for fear he would vanish into the moonlight, because with his litheness and the eerie locks of hair that even in the silvering radiance showed a note of crimson cresting over his ears, he looked exactly as if he had come out of the hollow in some oak-tree.

“I thought you might feel that way about it,” he answered me, or rather I think that is what he said, because he was crooning to me and the Ladies Bird at the same time, and with a mixture of epitaphs and endearments that I didn’t care to untangle.  “There, there, lovely lady, don’t be scared; it is going to be all right,” he soothed, as he lifted one of the fluffy biddies and tucked her under his arm.