cool hands on his face.  Because the Goddess of Gifts had become associated in his mind with the first day he could remember in his early childhood—­a radiant and merry day—­he had come to identify with her this Lady of the Spring, who alone gave romance to the harsher, soberer years that followed his father’s death.  To-day Marcus could have sworn she smiled at him before she disappeared, as the water receded after the gushing flow which he had come just in time to watch.  He was rising from his knees when his eye fell upon a strange, green gleam upon the wet rock.  For a moment he thought it was the gleam of a lizard’s back, but as he took the little object into his hand he realised that it was hard, and inert, and transparent.  Even in the dusk he could see the light in it.  It almost burned in his hand.  He felt sure that it was a gift from his Lady, but he did not stop to think what he could do with it.  He was filled with happiness just in looking at it.  It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he could take it to his mother and it would make her smile.  Full of joy, he hurried homeward.  Even on ordinary occasions he loved the end of summer days.  His grandfather would go to sleep and cease saying strange things, and, after he and his mother had finished the evening tasks in house and court-yard and sheepfold, they would sit for a while together in the warm doorway, and she would tell him stories of his father and of many other people and things.  Sometimes when he leaned against her and her voice grew sweet and low he forgot he was a man and a shepherd.

To-night this did not happen, although the air was sweet with roses, and the stars were large and bright.  Marcus had shown his mother the green marvel and told her how the Lady of the Spring had brought it out to him from her secret recesses.  She had caught her breath and turned it over and over, and then she had put her arms close round him and explained to him that this beautiful thing was a jewel, an emerald, and must have belonged in a great lady’s ring.  Her father had been a goldsmith and she had often seen such jewels in their setting.  They were bought with great sums of money, and to lose one was like losing money.  And that was true, too, of finding one.  Money must be returned and so must this.

Money—­money—­his head swam.  Could he have bought his heart’s desire with the little green gleam?  He put his head on his mother’s knee and, for all his efforts, a sob sounded in his throat.  She lifted him up against her warm, soft breast, and her hands were smoother and cooler than his Lady’s, and he told her all that was in his heart, and she told him all that was in hers, for him.