At that moment a note of music, strayed, it seemed, out of space, wandered across the hill-top. Then a few more, thin and silvery, ran down the silence like a spray of water. The air was lost in distance, but the notes were undoubtedly those of a harp.
'It's them!' whispered Hazel. 'I'm bound to go.' Then she remembered her mother's injunctions, and took to her heels. At home in her quiet room, she thought of the strange shining folk playing on their purple mountain.
She never knew that the harper was her father returning by devious roads from one of the many festivals at which he played in summer-time, and having frequent rests by the way, owing to the good ale he had drunk. Her bright galaxy of faery was only a drunken man. Her fate had been settled by a passing whim of his, but so had been her coming into the world.
When she went in, Edward was sitting up for her, anxious, but trying to reason himself into calm, as Hazel was given to roaming.
'Where have you been?' he asked rather sternly, for he had suffered many things from anxiety and from his mother.
'Only up to'erts the pool, Ed'ard.'
'Don't go there again.'
'Canna I go walking on the green hill by my lonesome?'
'No. You can go in the woods. They're safe enough.'
'Foxy's a bad dog!' came Mrs. Marston's voice from upstairs. 'She bit the rope and took the mutton!'