“Good-bye!” 

 “Good-bye,” he answered mournfully. 

 But his attentive ears failed to discern the sound of departing footsteps. The breeze whispered in the tree-tops. A sulphur-yellow bird, of French extraction, perched in a flowering bush, insistently demanded: “Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?”—What’s he say? What’s he say?—over and over again, becoming quite wrathful because neither he nor any one else offered the slightest reply or explanation. The girl sympathized with the bird. If the particular he whose blond top she could barely see by peeping over the rock would only say something, matters would be easier for her. But he didn’t. So presently, in a voice of suspiciously saccharine meekness, she said:— 

 “Please, Mr. Beetle Man, I’m lost.” 

 “No, you’re not,” he said reassuringly. “You’re not a quarter of a mile from the Puerto del Norte Road.” 

 “But I don’t know which direction—” 

 “Perfectly simple. Keep on over the top of the rock; turn left down the slope, right up the dry stream bed to a dead tree; bear right past—” 

 “That’s too many turns, I never could remember more than two.” 

 “Now, listen,” he said persuasively. “I can make it quite plain to you if—” 

 “I don’t wish to listen! I’ll never find it.” 

 “I’ll toss you up my compass.” 

 “I don’t want your compass,” she said firmly. 

 A long patient sigh exhaled from below. 

 “Do you want me to guide you?” 

 “No,” she retorted, and was instantly panic-stricken, for the monosyllable was of that accent which sets fire to bridges and burns them beyond hope of return. 

 Slowly she got to her feet. Perhaps she would have dared and gone; perhaps she would have swallowed pride and her negative, and made one more appeal. She turned hesitantly and saw the devil. 

 It was a small devil on stilts, not more than three or four inches tall, but 

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