trying to wheedle away with outlandish charms and brews. A buzzard soared above them in concentric circles, quite, as the gypsy had said, like a thought of evil hovering over this enchanted paradise. It was far away, and yet, somehow, it oddly reminded Sally of the story of the little cloud no bigger than a man's hand, and how it grew and grew, told her when she wore pigtails and used to sit in the high-backed pews of the old church. How far away that sanctuary seemed!
But their eyes returned to the little heavenly messengers, flitting so peacefully above them, and Ben, his tongue unloosed at last, told her of his nicknames for these and all the other wonderful things on the island. She did not smile at them at all, for, with a little tremor of sympathy, she realized what a pathetic game it had been, that and all the tasks he had devised, battling against despair in this lonely place whose very loveliness at times seemed almost sinister.
She was almost for giving up the hunt then and there, but they tossed aside their feelings of depression, and ate, and laughed, and sang, till they woke the echoes of wood and cliff and were happy again. When Don Alfonso had devoured the last scrap, they rose and walked to the brink of the great gorge which severed Cathedral Woods from the last slope of the mountain.
"Hear that, Sally!"
A voice like thunder, shot through with notes of laughter, rose from four hundred feet below where the white waterfall ended, and yet never ended, the leap it started with such wild abandon by their side.
