the pocket of his coat, took out a plug of apple-tobacco, saying:
“Yes. Here you are, Willy. You can have this.”
And Willy, grinning with foolish joy, had clutched the plug of tobacco and, still kind and foolish, had followed on a few steps more, saying anxiously:
“Are ye comin’back, Oll? Will ye be comin’back real soon?”
And Gant, feeling a strange and nameless sorrow, answered:
“I don’t know, Willy”—for suddenly he saw that he might never come this way again.
But Willy, still happy, foolish, and contented, had turned and galloped away toward the house, flinging his arms out and shouting as he went:
“I’ll be waitin’fer ye. I’ll be waitin’fer ye, Oll.”
And Gant went on then, down the road, and there was a nameless sorrow in him that he could not understand and some of the brightness had gone out of the day.
When he got to the mill, he turned left along the road that went down by Spangler’s Run, crossed by the bridge below, and turned from the road into the wood-path on the other side. A child was standing in the path, and turned and went on ahead of him. In the wood the sunlight made swarming moths of light across the path and through the leafy tangle of the trees: the sunlight kept shifting and swarming on the child’s golden hair, and all around him were the sudden noises of the wood, the stir, the rustle, and the bullet thrum of wings, the cool broken sound of hidden water.
The wood got denser, darker as he went on and coming to a place where the path split away into two forks, Gant stopped, and turning to the child said, “Which one shall I take?” And the child did not answer him.
But someone was there in the wood before him. He heard footsteps on the path, and saw a footprint in the earth, and turning took the path where the footprint was and where it seemed he could hear someone walking.
And then, with the bridgeless instancy of dreams, it seemed to him that all of the bright green-gold around him in the wood grew dark and sombre, the path grew darker, and suddenly he was walking in a strange and gloomy forest, haunted by the brown and tragic light of dreams. The forest shapes of great trees rose around him, he could hear no bird-song now, even his own feet on the path were soundless, but he always
