Dancing on the bough,
Dancing with your tilted wings
On the apple-bough.

Now as Martin sang and the milkmaids danced, it seemed that Gillian
in her prison heard and saw nothing except the music and the
movement of her sorrows. But presently she raised her hand and
touched her hair-band, and then she lifted up the fairest face
Martin had ever seen, so that he needs must see it nearer; and he
took the green gate in one stride, and the green dancers never
observed him. Then Gillian's tender mouth parted like an opening
quince-blossom, and--

"Oh, Mother, Mother!" she said, "if you had only lived they would
not have stolen the flower from my hair while I sat weeping."

Above her head a whispering voice made answer, "Oh, Daughter,
Daughter, dry your sweet eyes. You shall wear this other flower when
yours is gone over the duckpond to Adversane."

And lo! A second primrose dropped out of the skies into her lap. And
that day the lovely Gillian wept no more.



PART II

It happened that on an afternoon in May Martin Pippin passed again
through Adversane, and as he passed he thought, "Now certainly I
have been here before," but he could not remember when or how, for a