"What is it, Nora?" they both whispered in an awestruck tone.
"I don't know," she replied. "Cecil, do you know of anything queer in these woods? Are there any dwarfs or—or creatures like in fairy stories? For I am sure I saw a very, very little black or dark-brown man with a red jacket and cap—he wasn't as high as up to my waist—scrambling among the bushes over there, and picking and eating blackberries."
Cecil and Hilary stared at her.
"You must have fancied it, Nora," said Cecil. "I never heard of a—" but he was interrupted by a sort of smothered scream.
"There, there," whispered Nora, clutching hold of both the boys, "there he is again!"
And sure enough there "he" was, and just exactly as Nora had described him. A tiny dark-brown creature, like a wee old man, with a little red jacket, and a small red skull-cap on the top of his head. He seemed to have come up suddenly from among the bushes; he was holding the branch of a blackberry tree in one hand, and with the other greedily plucking and eating the fruit as fast as he could.
"Who can he be?" said Nora, who had grown very pale.
"I wish I'd a gun here," said Hilary, who was rather given to boasting.
"Nonsense," said Nora, "if he's some kind of a man,—and he can't be an animal—animals don't wear jackets and caps—it would be very wrong, and if he's a—a wood-spirit, or anything like that, shooting would be no good."
