“Mother,” said Eleanor one night after this had been talked over, “what if Roger and I were to ask Andrew to go with us to Mother Izan’s and see her tame birds and animals, and Gwillym’s squirrel?  And we could explain what he wants of them.”

Like many children in such remote places, Eleanor and Roger had picked up dialects as they did rhymes or games, and often interpreted for a peasant who knew neither Norman nor Saxon and wished to make himself understood at the castle.

The idea met with approval, and the next day Lady Philippa, Eleanor, Roger and Andrew went to the cottage by the Fairies’ Well.  They found that David had been there before them.

“He’s a knowledgeable man, that,” the old woman said with a shrewd smile.  “He’s even talked Howel into letting the clay images alone, he has.  Gwillym’s down by the claybank now, a-making Saint Blaise and little Merlin.”

The cottage evidently was a new sort of place to Andrew, and his dark eyes were full of kindly interest as he looked about.  The old dame sat humped in her doorway among her chirping, fluttering, barking and squeaking pets.  An ancient raven cocked his eye wisely at the visitors, a tame hare hopped about the floor, a cat with three kittens, all as black as soot, occupied a basket, and there were also a fox cub rescued from a trap, a cosset lamb and a tiny hedgehog.  Birds nested in the thatch; a squirrel barked from the lintel, and all the four-footed things of the neighborhood seemed at home there,

The stone-carver readily made friends with Gwillym, who seemed to understand by some instinct his broken talk and lively gestures.  When Andrew wished to know what some bird or animal was like, the boy would mold it in clay, or perhaps take him to some haunt of the woodlands where they could lie motionless for a half-hour watching the live creature itself.

But there was one among Gwillym’s clay figures which they never saw in the forest, and to which the boy never would give a name.  It was a shaggy half-human imp with stubby horns, goat-legs and little hoofed feet.  He modeled it, bent under a huge bundle, perched on a point of rock, dancing, playing on an oaten pipe.  Andrew was so taken with the seated figure that he copied it in stone to hold up the font.

“What’s that for?” asked David when he saw it.  “Are ye askin’ Auld Hornie ben the kirk, man?”

Andrew laughed and dusted his pointed brown fingers.  “One of Pan’s people, David.  They will not stay away from us.  If you sprinkle the threshold with holy water they come through the window.”

That figure puzzled David, but Gwillym would say nothing.  At last the church was finished, and the village girls went gathering fresh rushes, fragrant herbs and flowers to strew the floor.  David went fishing with Roger in Roger’s own particular trout-stream.  Coming back in the twilight they beheld Gwillym dancing upon the moss, to the piping of a strange little hairy man sitting on a rock.  An instant later the stranger vanished, and the boy came toward them searching their faces with his solemn black eyes.