"Aura! Aura! Aura!" Was it Aura, or only the echoing sound of the calling lambs?
Still, soft, equable, serene, oh, misty mountain moonlight what didst thou hold?
And in the garden across the lawn, where the girl's feet had lain, was that curved shadow, a snake making its way to the black and white shadow of the Druid's yew tree?
Oh, misty moonlight of the valley what didst thou hold, as the faint, far--away cry echoed between the hills, and up into high heaven?
Did they meet and hold converse face to face upon the mountain-top, those wandering lights and shadows on the mountainsides? or did they wander, searching for something, until dawn, and find nothing?
* * * * *
Dawn at any rate came soon, as Ned had said it would.
The moonlight changed swiftly to sunlight, the heifer lowed for her bull-calf, a sleepy chaffinch chirruped his challenge to the coming day, and Ted Cruttenden coming into the verandah from the library saw Ned entering it from the music room, while at the hall door between them stood Aurelia, blushing at being caught so early.
She was in a loose, white overall, girded in at the waist with a leathern girdle, and her bare feet were shod in sandals.
"Good-morning," she said, without any trace of the blush in her voice. "See what I have found under the old yew tree. Grandfather's chair had torn the turf, and there it was. Do you think it can be the snake-ring grandfather told us about?"