or dark-brown man with a red jacket and cap—he wasn't as high as up to my waist—scrambling among the bushes over there, and picking and eating blackberries."[Pg 91]

[Pg 91]

Cecil and Hilary stared at her.

"You must have fancied it, Nora," said Cecil. "I never heard of a—" but he was interrupted by a sort of smothered scream.

"There, there," whispered Nora, clutching hold of both the boys, "there he is again!"

And sure enough there "he" was, and just exactly as Nora had described him. A tiny dark-brown creature, like a wee old man, with a little red jacket, and a small red skull-cap on the top of his head. He seemed to have come up suddenly from among the bushes; he was holding the branch of a blackberry tree in one hand, and with the other greedily plucking and eating the fruit as fast as he could.

"Who can he be?" said Nora, who had grown very pale.

"I wish I'd a gun here," said Hilary, who was rather given to boasting.

"Nonsense," said Nora, "if he's some kind of a man,—and he can't be an animal—animals don't wear jackets and caps—it would be very wrong, and if he's a—a wood-spirit, or anything like that, shooting would be no good."

But Hilary and she had raised their voices in this discussion without knowing it. Suddenly the small man turned round, placed one hand behind his big black ear, as if listening, and then, seemingly catching sight of the children, sprang forward, stretching out his two long arms before him in a curious way towards the little group.

A group no longer—with a scream, or three screams joined into one, the children had turned and fled. How they got through the thick growing bushes without being torn to pieces I am sure I cannot tell. Fear lends wings, I suppose. However that may be, I know it was in a wonderfully short time that they found themselves, panting and shaking, breathless and trembling, but safe, inside the shelter of their own garden gate.[Pg 92]

[Pg 92]

"Oh, Nora!"

"Oh, Cecil!"

"Oh, Hilary!"

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