I suppose after
this we had journeyed about an hour, and the risen sun was on the
extreme verge of the gilded horizon, when I espied betwixt me and the
deep woods that lay in the distance a little child walking.
She, at any rate, was not a stranger to this moorland. Indeed,
something in her carriage, in the grey cloak she wore, in her light,
insistent step, in the old lantern she carried, in the shrill little
song she or the wind seemed singing, for a moment half impelled me to
turn aside. Even Rosinante pricked forward her ears, and stooped her
gentle face to view more closely this light traveller. And she pawed
the ground with her great shoe, and gnawed her bit when I drew rein
and leaned forward in the saddle to speak to the child.
"Is there any path here, little girl, that I may follow?" I said.
"No path at all," she answered.
"But how then do strangers find their way across the moor?" I said.
She debated with herself a moment. "Some by the stars, and some by the
moon," she answered.
"By the moon!" I cried. "But at day, what then?"
"Oh, then, sir," she said, "they can see.
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