Long I sat watching them in their cool communion, half-embraced, talking a little, smiling a little, never once kissing.  They did not seem shy of that; it was rather as if they were too much each other’s to think of such a thing.  And then her head slid lower and lower down his shoulder, and sleep buttoned the lids over those chicory-blue eyes.  How careful he was, then, not to wake her, though I could see his arm was getting stiff!  He still sat, good as gold, holding her, till it began quite to hurt me to see his shoulder thus in chancery.  But presently I saw him draw his arm away ever so carefully, lay her head down on the grass, and lean forward to stare at something.  Straight in front of them was a magpie, balancing itself on a stripped twig of thorn-tree.  The agitating bird, painted of night and day, was making a queer noise and flirting one wing, as if trying to attract attention.  Rising from the twig, it circled, vivid and stealthy, twice round the tree, and flew to another a dozen paces off.  The boy rose; he looked at his little mate, looked at the bird, and began quietly to move toward it; but uttering again its queer call, the bird glided on to a third thorn-tree.  The boy hesitated then—­but once more the bird flew on, and suddenly dipped over the hill.  I saw the boy break into a run; and getting up quickly, I ran too.

When I reached the crest there was the black and white bird flying low into a dell, and there the boy, with hair streaming back, was rushing helter-skelter down the hill.  He reached the bottom and vanished into the dell.  I, too, ran down the hill.  For all that I was prying and must not be seen by bird or boy, I crept warily in among the trees to the edge of a pool that could know but little sunlight, so thickly arched was it by willows, birch-trees, and wild hazel.  There, in a swing of boughs above the water, was perched no pied bird, but a young, dark-haired girl with, dangling, bare, brown legs.  And on the brink of the black water goldened, with fallen leaves, the boy was crouching, gazing up at her with all his soul.  She swung just out of reach and looked down at him across the pool.  How old was she, with her brown limbs, and her gleaming, slanting eyes?  Or was she only the spirit of the dell, this elf-thing swinging there, entwined with boughs and the dark water, and covered with a shift of wet birch leaves.  So strange a face she had, wild, almost wicked, yet so tender; a face that I could not take my eyes from.  Her bare toes just touched the pool, and flicked up drops of water that fell on the boy’s face.

From him all the sober steadfastness was gone; already he looked as wild as she, and his arms were stretched out trying to reach her feet.  I wanted to cry to him:  “Go back, boy, go back!” but could not; her elf eyes held me dumb-they looked so lost in their tender wildness.

And then my heart stood still, for he had slipped and was struggling in deep water beneath her feet.  What a gaze was that he was turning up to her—­not frightened, but so longing, so desperate; and hers how triumphant, and how happy!