The day was much cooler than it had been of late.  There was a fresh breeze though the sun shone.  John Derringham wandered down to the apple tree and thence to the gap, and through it and on into the park.  His walk was for pleasure, and aimless as to destination, and presently he sat down under a low-spreading oak and looked at the house—­La Sarthe Chase.  A beautiful view of it could be obtained from there, and it interested him—­and from that his thoughts came to Halcyone and her strange, quaint little personality, and he stretched himself out and putting his hands under his head he looked up into the dense foliage of the tree above him—­and there his eyes met two grave, quiet ones peering down from a mass of green, and he saw slender brown legs drawn up on a broad branch, and a scrap of blue cotton frock.

“Good morning,” Halcyone said quite composedly, “don’t make a noise, please, or rustle—­the mother doe is just coming out of the copse with her new fawn.”

“How on earth did you get up there?” he asked, surprised.

“I swung myself from the lower branch on the other side; it is quite easy—­would you like to come up, too?  There is plenty of room—­and then we could be sure the doe would not see you and she might peep out again.  I do not wish to frighten her.”

John Derringham rose leisurely and went to the further side of the oak, where sure enough there was a drooping branch and he was soon up beside her, dangling his long limbs as he sat in a fork.

“What an enchanting bower you have found,” he said.  “Away from all the world.”

“No indeed, that cannot be at this time of the year,” she answered.  “See, there is a squirrel far up in the top and there are birds, and look—­down there at the roots there is a rabbit hole with such a family in it.  It is only in the winter you can be alone—­and not even then, for you know there are the moles even if you cannot see them.”

“Creatures are interesting to watch, aren’t they?” he said.  “I have an old place which I loved when I was a boy.  It is let now because I am too poor to live in it, but I used to like to prowl about in the early mornings long ago.”

“We are all very poor,” said Halcyone simply, “but I am sorry for you that you have to let strangers be in your house—­that must be dreadful.”

John Derringham smiled, and his face lost the insouciante arrogance which irritated his enemies so.  His smile, rare enough, was singularly sweet.

“I don’t think about it,” he said.  “It is best not to when anything is disagreeable.”

“Cheiron and I often tell one another things like that.”

“Cheiron—­who is Cheiron?” he asked.

This seemed a superfluous question to Halcyone.

“The Professor, of course.  He is just like the picture in my ‘Heroes,’” she answered, “and I often pretend we are in the cave on Pelion.  I thought you would perhaps be like one of the others since you were his pupil, too, but I cannot find which.  You are not Heracles—­because you have none of those great muscles—­or AEneas or Peleus.  Are—­are you Jason himself, perhaps—­” and her voice sounded glad with discovery.  “We do not know, he may not have had a Greek face.”