on them, then, turning, called his sheep. Three minutes later
there was no trace of him or of them: they had vanished as if by
magic, leaving silence and shadow. The girl climbed the hill
toward home on San Pietro's back, shaken, awed, afraid.


CHAPTER XII

If Bertuccio had but shown any signs of having seen her companion
of yesterday, Daphne's bewilderment would have been less; but to
keep meeting a being who claimed to belong to another world, who
came and went, invisible, it would seem, when he chose, to other
eyes except her own, might well rouse strange thoughts in the
mind of a girl cut off from her old life in the world of
commonplace events. To be sure, the shepherd Antoli had seen
him, but had spoken of him voluntarily as a mysterious creature,
one of the blessed saints come down to aid the sick. The beggar
woman had seen him, but had fallen prostrate at his feet as in
awe of supernatural presence. When the wandering god had talked
across the hedge the eyes of Giacomo and Assunta had apparently
been holden; and now Bertuccio, whose ears were keen, and whose
eyes, in their lazy Italian fashion, saw more then they ever
seemed to, Bertuccio had been all the afternoon within a stone's
throw of the place where the god had played to her, and Bertuccio
gave no sign of having seen a man. She eyed him questioningly as
they started out the next morning on their way to the ruins of
some famous baths on the mountain facing them.

There was keenness in the autumn air that morning, but the green
slopes far and near bore no trace of flaming color or of decay,