Page:Daphne, an Autumn Pastoral.djvu/26

 in blue, against a bluer sky. A moment later she was gone.

Half an hour passed. Cautiously above the top of the hill appeared a girl's head. She saw what she was looking for: the dreaded man was sitting on the stump of a felled birch tree, gazing down the valley, his cheeks resting on his hands. Daphne, stealing behind a giant ilex, studied him. He wore something that looked like a golf suit of brownish shade; a soft felt hat drooped over his face. The girl peered out from her hiding place cautiously, holding her skirts together to make herself slim and small. It was a choice of evils. On this side of the hill was a man; on that, the whole wide world, pathless. She was hopelessly lost.

"No bad man could whistle like that," thought Daphne, caressingly touching with her cheek the tree that protected her.

Once she ventured from her refuge, then swiftly retreated. Courage returning, she stepped