But he went.  He left the two figures together, and presently saw them both from a distance against the vastness of the gold.  Bushes and shrubs, and two or three giant pine trees, between the summit of Drouva and the plain, showed black, and the figures of woman and child were almost ebon.  Dion watched them.  He could not see any features.  The two were now like carved things which could move, and only by their movements could they tell him anything.  The gun over the boy’s shoulder was like a long finger pointing to the west where a redness was creeping among the gold.  The great moon climbed above Drouva.  Bluish-gray smoke came from the camp-fire at a little distance.  It ascended without wavering straight up in the windless evening.  Far down in the hidden valley, behind Dion and below the small village, shadows were stealing through quiet Elis, shadows were coming to shroud the secret that was held in the shrine of Olympia.  A slight sound of bells stole up on the stillness from somewhere below, somewhere not far from those two ebon figures.  And this sound, suggestive of moving animals coming from pasture to protected places for the night, put a heart in the breast of this pastoral.  Thin was the sound and delicate, fit music for Greece in the fragile evening.  As Dion listened to it, he looked at that black finger below him pointing to the redness in the west.  Then he remembered it was a gun, and, for an instant, looking at the red, he thought of the color of fresh blood.

At this moment the tall figure, Rosamund, took hold of the gun, and the two figures moved away slowly down the winding track in the hill, and were hidden at a turning of the path.

Almost directly a third shot rang out.  The young dweller in the wilderness was allowing Rosamund to give a taste of her skill with the gun.

CHAPTER VI

Rosamund came back to the camp that evening with Dirmikis,—­so the boy of the wilderness was called,—­and five quail, three of them to her gun.  She was radiant, and indeed had an air almost of triumph.  Her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks were glowing; she looked like a beautiful schoolgirl as she walked in over the plateau with the sunset flushing scarlet behind her, and the big moon coming to meet her.  Dirmikis, at her side, carried the quail upside down in his brown hands.  Rosamund had the gun under her right arm.

“It’s a capital gun,” she called out to Dion.  “I got three.  Here, Dirmikis,”—­she turned to the boy,—­“show them.”

“Does he understand English?”

“No, but he understands me!” she retorted with pride.  “Look there!”

Dirmikis held up the birds, smiling a savage smile.

“Aren’t they fat?  Feel them, Dion!  The three fattest ones fell to my gun, but don’t tell him.”

She sketched a delicious wink, looking about sixteen.

“I really have a good eye,” she added, praising herself with gusto.  “It’s no use being over-modest, is it?  If one has a gift, well one just has it.  Here, Dirmikis!”