"At daybreak?" I faltered.
"Yes; they ought to be got to work as soon as they hop off the roost," answered Pan, as he spread a little more of the hay on the floor in front of the perch of the Bird family.
"How do I know it—I mean daybreak?" I asked, with eagerness and hesitation both in my voice, as Pan started padding out through the monster-haunted darkness towards the square of silver light beyond the huge door. As I asked my question I followed close at his heels.
"I'll be going through to Plunketts and I'll call you, like this." As we came from the shadows into the moonlight beside the coach, Adam paused and gave three low weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung. "I'll call twice, and then you answer if you are awake. If not, I'll call again."
"I'll be awake," I asserted positively. "Won't you—that is, must I fix—"
"That's all for to-night, and good night," he answered me with a laugh that was as reedy as the brisk wind in the trees. In a second he was padding away from me into the trees beyond the garden as swiftly as I suppose jaguars and lithe lions travel.
"Oh, don't you want some supper?" I called into the moonlight, even running a few steps after him.
"Parched corn in my pocket—lambs," came fluting back to me from the shadows.
"Supper am sarved, little Mis'," Rufus announced from the hack door, as I stood still looking and listening into the night.
"Uncle Cradd," I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life, "who is that remarkable man?"