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They all looked at me with amazement and some consternation. Words passed between them in a strange tongue, though it was plain they referred to the manner of their finding me, and what was to be done about it. At length, the old man having said something to the effect that whatever I might be I did not appear particularly dangerous, they laughed, all of them, and made a sign that I was to come with them along the trail.

We moved slowly; my captors, for so I was to regard them, so disposing themselves as we went that I was scarcely aware of them. We moved stealthily from bole to bole, mingling so with the tawny and amber shadows, that time by time I hesitated, thinking myself abandoned. Then I heard the old man’s throaty chuckle like the movement of slow water among stones, or caught the bright, regardful eyes of Ravenutzi fixed upon me from behind the interlacing boughs.

After an hour’s walking we came to a bramble-fenced hollow, ringed with very tall trees, smelling of the sun. Here there might be a dozen of the wood folks, with four women among them, lying up like deer through the bright betraying noon.