Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 4 (1926-10).djvu/34

 tion. Behold!" He waved his arm in a commanding gesture.

"By George, you're right!" I agreed in disappointment as I surveyed the clearing.

" [sic]The trees—beech, birch and poplar—had been cut away for the space of an acre or more, and the stumps removed, the cleared land afterward being sown with grass as smooth and well cared for as a private estate's lawn. Twenty yards ahead a path of flat, smooth stones was laid in the sod, running from a dense thicket of dwarf pine and rhododendron across the sward to a clump of tall, symmetrical cedars standing almost in the center of the clearing. Through the dark, bearded boughs of the evergreens we caught the fitful gleam of lights as the soft summer-evening breeze swayed the branches.

"Too bad," I murmured; "guess we'll have to push on a little farther for our bivouac."

"Mille cochons, non!" de Grandin denied. "Not I. Parbleu, but my feet faint from exhaustion, and my knees cry out for the caress of Mother Earth with a piety they have not known these many years! Come, let us go to the proprietor of that mansion and say, 'Monsieur, here are two worthy gentleman tramps who crave the boon of a night's lodging and a meal, also a bath and a cup of wine, if that so entirely detestable Monsieur Volstead has allowed you to retain any.' He will not refuse us, my friend. Morbleu, a man with the charity of a Senegalese idol would not turn us away in the circumstances! I shall ask him with tears in my voice—pardieu, I shall weep like a lady in the cinema; I shall wring my hands and entreat him! Never fear, my friend, we shall lodge in yonder house this night, or Jules de Grandin goes supperless to a bed of pine-needles."

"Humph, I hope your optimism is justified," I grunted as I followed him across the close-cropped lawn to the stone path and marched toward the lights in the cedars.

We had progressed a hundred feet or so along the path when a sudden squealing cry, followed by a crashing in the thicket at the clearing edge, stopped us in our tracks. Something fluttering and white, gleaming like a ghost in the faint starlight, broke through the bushes, and a soft slapping noise, as though someone were beating his hands lightly and quickly together, sounded as the figure approached us.

"Oh, sirs, run, run for your lives, it—it's Pan!" the girl called in a frightened voice as she came abreast of us. "Run, run, if you want to live; he's there, I tell you! I saw his face among the leaves!"

One of de Grandin's small, slender hands rose with an involuntary gesture to stroke his little blond mustache as he surveyed our admonisher. She was tall and built with a stately, statuesque beauty which was doubly enhanced by the simple white linen garment which fell in straight lines from her lovely bare shoulders to her round, bare ankles. The robe was bound about the waist with a corded girdle which crossed above her breast, and was entirely sleeveless, though cut rather high at the neck, exposing only a few inches of white throat. Her feet, narrow and high-arched, and almost as white as file linen of her robe, were innocent of any covering, and I realized that the slapping sound I had heard was the impact of her bare soles on the stones of the path as she ran.

"Tiens, Mademoiselle," de Grandin declared with a bow, "you are as lovely as Pallas Athene herself. Who is it has dared frighten you? Cordieu, I shall do myself the honor of twisting his unmannerly nose!"

"No, no!" the girl besought in a trembling voice. "Do not go back,