"You dear little Vraagal! Give me your hand." Johannes laid his small hand trustfully in the broad open palm. The large hand was dark and shaggy on the outside, but white, and smooth, and firm on the inside. "Do you not know that yet? Then let Father Pan make you happy with a word. Do not forget it, mind! Vraagal can do whatever he wills to do—everything—if he will only be patient! But tell me now,—how did you know me?"
"I have seen statues and engravings of you."
"Do I look like them?"
"No!" said Johannes. "I think you are much nicer. In the prints you look like the Devil."
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Pan, raising his heavy hands above his head, and clapping them together. "That is who I am, Vraagal. They have made a devil of me, so as to drive people away. But do you believe, now, that I am bad? Give me your paddy again! And now the other one!"
This time Johannes laid both his own in Pan's two giant hands, and said: "I know who you are. You are good. You are Nature!"
"Hold your tongue, little hypocrite, with your conceited platitudes! Are you not ashamed of yourself?"
Johannes blushed deeply; tears fell from his eyes, and he wished he could sink out of sight. But Pan drew him up closer and stroked his cheek.
"Now, do not cry! It is not so bad. You have come, too, out of a dreary nest. I am not evil—neither is Wistik. Only trust us."
"I have told him that, too," said Wistik, earnestly and emphatically.