Out of the mist they rode a company of wild-looking men wearing garments such as I had never seen before.  Most of them were savage and uncouth, and their clothes were disordered and stained as if with hard travel and fight.  I did not know—­or even ask myself—­why they did not frighten me, but they did not.  Suddenly I seemed to know that they were brave men and had been doing some brave, hard thing.  Here and there among them I caught sight of a broken and stained sword, or a dirk with only a hilt left.  They were all pale, but their wild faces were joyous and triumphant.  I saw it as they drew near.

The man who seemed their chieftain was a lean giant who was darker but, under his darkness, paler than the rest.  On his forehead was a queer, star-shaped scar.  He rode a black horse, and before him he held close with his left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange, rich clothes.  The big man’s hand was pressed against her breast as he held her; but though it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a dark-red stain on the embroideries of her dress.  Her dress was brown, and she had brown hair and soft brown eyes like a little doe’s.  The moment I saw her I loved her.

The black horse stopped before me.  The wild troop drew up and waited behind.  The great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and then, lifting the little girl in his long arms, bent down and set her gently on her feet on the mossy earth in the mist beside me.  I got up to greet her, and we stood smiling at each other.  And in that moment as we stood the black horse moved forward, the muffled trampling began again, the wild company swept on its way, and the white mist closed behind it as if it had never passed.

Of course I know how strange this will seem to people who read it, but that cannot be helped and does not really matter.  It was in that way the thing happened, and it did not even seem strange to me.  Anything might happen on the moor—­anything.  And there was the fair little girl with the eyes like a doe’s.

I knew she had come to play with me, and we went together to my house among the bushes of broom and gorse and played happily.  But before we began I saw her stand and look wonderingly at the dark-red stain on the embroideries on her childish breast.  It was as if she were asking herself how it came there and could not understand.  Then she picked a fern and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells and put them in her girdle in such a way that they hid its ugliness.

I did not really know how long she stayed.  I only knew that we were happy, and that, though her way of playing was in some ways different from mine, I loved it and her.  Presently the mist lifted and the sun shone, and we were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden in a room in a castle because something strange was going to happen which we were not told about.  She ran behind a big gorse bush and did not come back.  When I ran to look for her she was nowhere.  I could not find her, and I went back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.