Hand in hand we wandered through that enchanted place, seeking the folk of elf-land, “and heard their mystic voices calling, from fairy knoll and haunted hill.” Not till the fire died down into ashes did we leave the grove. Then we found that the full moon was gleaming lustrously from a cloudless sky across the valley. Between us and her stretched up a tall pine, wondrously straight and slender and branchless to its very top, where it overflowed in a crest of dark boughs against the silvery splendour behind it. Beyond, the hill farms were lying in a suave, white radiance.
“Doesn’t it seem a long, long time to you since we left home this afternoon?” asked the Story Girl. “And yet it is only a few hours.”
Only a few hours—true; yet such hours were worth a cycle of common years untouched by the glory and the dream.
CHAPTER XXIX. WE LOSE A FRIEND
Our beautiful October was marred by one day of black tragedy—the day Paddy died. For Paddy, after seven years of as happy a life as ever a cat lived, died suddenly—of poison, as was supposed. Where he had wandered in the darkness to meet his doom we did not know, but in the frosty dawnlight he dragged himself home to die. We found him lying on the doorstep when we got up, and it did not need Aunt Janet’s curt announcement, or Uncle Blair’s reluctant shake of the head, to tell us that there was no chance of our pet recovering this time. We felt that nothing could be done. Lard and sulphur on his paws would be of no use, nor would any visit to Peg Bowen avail. We stood around in mournful silence; the Story Girl sat down on the step and took poor Paddy upon her lap.
“I s’pose there’s no use even in praying now,” said Cecily desperately.
“It wouldn’t do any harm to try,” sobbed Felicity.
“You needn’t waste your prayers,” said Dan mournfully, “Pat is beyond human aid. You can tell that by his eyes. Besides, I don’t believe it was the praying cured him last time.”
“No, it was Peg Bowen,” declared Peter, “but she couldn’t have bewitched him this time for she’s been away for months, nobody knows where.”