"I fear no ghosts. Wilt thou show me the way, Camille?"

"I!" The idiot fell upon the grass with a sort of gobbling cry. I thought
it the prelude to a fit of some sort, and was stepping towards him, when
he rose to his feet, waved me off and hurried away down the slope
homewards.

Here was food for reflection, which I mumbled in secret.

A day or two afterwards I joined Camille at midday on the heights where
he was pasturing his flocks. He had shifted his ground a little distance
westwards, and I could not find him at once. At last I spied him, his
back to a rock, his hand dabbled for coolness in a little runnel that
trickled at his side. He looked up and greeted me with a smile. He had
conceived an affection for me, this poor lost soul.

"It will go soon," he said, referring to the miniature streamlet. "It is
safe in the woods; but to-morrow or next day the sun will lap it up ere
it can reach the skirt of the shadow above there. A farewell kiss to you,
little stream!"

He bent and sipped a mouthful of the clear water. He was in a more
reasonable state than he had shown for long, though it was now close
on the moon's final quarter, a period that should have marked a more
general tenor of placidity in him. The summer solstice, was, however, at
hand, and the weather sultry to a degree--as it had been, I did not fail
to remember, the year of his seizure.

"Camille," I said, "why to-day hast thou shifted thy ground a little in
the direction of the Buet ravine?"