seas, the golden apples in unknown gardens, never seemed to lords of high adventure more remote or more desirable than a provincial school-room thirty miles away seemed to this little shepherd.  He dreamed of it by day and by night.  Last night, when the Lady of the Spring held out her hand to him he had been sure that what it held would help him to go to Milan.  He knew he must have money, and that was why he had never told his mother what he wanted.  She would be unhappy, he knew, that she could not give it to him.  He wanted her to think that he asked for nothing better than to mind the sheep all day.  Sometimes his heart would be so hot with desire that only tears could cool it, and all alone in the pasture he would bury his face in the grass and sob until his dog came and licked his neck.  At other times it was his pan’s-pipe that brought ease.  His father had taught him to play on it when he was a mere baby, and sometimes he would forget his burden in making high, clear notes come out of the slender reeds.  To-day, especially, tears seemed far away, and he piped and piped until his heart was at rest, and the sun, now nearly in mid-heaven, made him warm and drowsy.

An hour later he woke with a start into a strange noonday silence.  Every blade, and twig, and flower, was hushed.  A soft white light dimmed the brilliant colours of the day.  No sound was heard from bird or insect, and the only movement was among his white sheep, which noiselessly, like a distant stream of foamy water, seemed to flow down a winding path.  The goats were standing quite still.  Suddenly they flung up their heads, as if at an imperious call, and in wild abandon rushed toward the shadowy woods above.  The dog, as if roused from a trance, gave chase, shattering the silence with yelping barks.  The boy, his heart beating violently, followed.  It took all the afternoon to collect and quiet the flock, and when Marcus started home he had himself not lost the awed sense of a Presence in his pasture.  The nearness seemed less familiar than that of his Lady of Gifts, and yet she must have been concerned in it, for the thrill that remained with him was a happy one.

It was late, but to-day more than ever he must stop at her shrine.  Near his regular path, below a narrow gorge, there was a marvellous spring.  It rose in the mountains, ran down among the rocks, and was received in an artificial chamber.  After a short halt there, it fell into the lake below.  The extraordinary thing about it was that three times in each day it increased and decreased with regular rise and fall.  One could lie beside it and watch its measured movements.  Everybody from far and near came to see it, even the grand people from the villas.  But Marcus, coming in the early morning or evening, had almost never met anyone there and had grown to feel that the spot was his own.  In the dusk or at dawn it often seemed to him as if a lovely lady, with eyes such as his mother might have had, came up out of the spring and laid smooth,