"Coo-oo-ee-e!"
He stood motionless in an attitude of listening and the hail was repeated.
"Sunset and evening star,"
he quoted in an undertone,
"And one clear call for me…."
There had been a period in his life some years earlier when the India-rubber Man discovered poetry. For months he read greedily and indiscriminately, and then, abruptly as it came, the fit passed; but tags of favourite lines remained in his memory, and the rhythm of running water invariably set them drumming in his ears.
He turned his back on the whispering river and, scrambling up the bank, made his way down-stream through the myriad scents and signs of another summer evening returning to its peace. The path wound through a plantation of young firs which grew fewer as he advanced, and presently gave glimpses beyond the tree-trunks of a wide stretch of open turf. The river, meeting a high wall of rock, swung round noiselessly almost at right angles to its former course; in the centre of the ground thus enclosed stood a weather-beaten tent, and close by lay a small two-wheeled cart with its shafts in the air.
The India-rubber Man paused for a moment on the fringe of the plantation and stood taking in the quiet scene. The shadowy outline of a grazing donkey moved slowly across the turf which narrowed to a single spit of sand, and here, standing upright with her hands at her sides, was the motionless figure of a girl, staring up the river. Something in her attitude stirred a poignant little memory in the mind of the India-rubber Man. In spite of his nearness he still remained invisible to her against the background of the darkling wood.
"Betty!" he called.
For an instant she stared and then came towards him, moving swiftly with her lithe, ineffable grace.