“That's news indeed,” said the potter cordially. “And who may she be? Some foreign damsel you met in your pilgrimage?”
“That's one way of saying it,” answered Alan smiling. “You shall see her and judge for yourself. How's all here?”
Wilfrid smiled rather sheepishly. “You and your wife must come and stay with us,” he insisted. “We'll make you welcome, spite of being a bit upset. Edwitha has been taking holiday. We're digging up the farm to see what's at the other end of Cold Harbor, lad.”
“Make no ado about us,” Alan protested. “It's partly about Cold Harbor that we came—but here they all are, upon my life!”
A merry company of travelers rode up the lane, and as they dismounted Edwitha came over the little footpath across the field, with the children clinging to her hands—a little embarrassed to find so many folk arriving and she not there. The boy scampered up to his father piping loudly, “Father, come you quick—we've found a picture in the ground!”
“What's all this?” asked Master Gay. And after Wilfrid's explanation nothing would do but that they all should go immediately to see what had come to light. When they beheld it the younger men could not keep from taking a hand themselves. With brooms of twigs, and potsherds, and water from the well in Cold Harbor, they industriously swept and scraped and washed the pavement which the men had now partly uncovered.
It was a mosaic floor of tiny blocks of red, black, yellow, white, brown, cream and slate-blue, set in cement so strong that not an inch of the fine even surface had warped. It was not a large pavement, and might have been the floor of a small dining or sitting-room so placed as to command a view of the valley. A part of one wall remained. It had been plastered and then covered with a finer plaster which was frescoed with a row of painted pillars against the deep marvelous red of Pompeii. The design of the floor was not at first clear. The edge was decorated with a conventional pattern in gray and white. The corners were cut off by diagonal lines making an eight-sided central space. This was outlined by a guilloche, or border of intertwining bands of brilliant colors. Inside this again was a circle divided into alternate square and triangular spaces with still brighter borders, containing each some bird or animal. In the central space was a seated figure playing on a harp, while around him were packed in a close group a lion, a ram, a bull, a goat, a crab, fishes, and other figures. Nobody at first saw what it could be.
“If I mistake not,” said the little stout man, Martin Bouvin, at last, “it is Sir Orpheus playing to the beasts.”
“To be sure!” cried Guy Bouverel. “Do you know books as well as cooking-pots, O man of the oldest profession?”
Martin grinned. “I heard a song about that once,” he answered, “and I have never forgotten it. It was a lucky song—for some folk.”