"_I_ know," remarked the Boy, quietly.

"Of course I was terrible frightened," the shepherd went on; "yet
somehow I couldn't keep away. So this very evening, before
I come down, I took a cast round by the cave, quietly. And
there--O Lord! there I saw him at last, as plain as I see you!"

"Saw WHO?" said his wife, beginning to share in her husband's
nervous terror.

"Why HIM, I'm a telling you!" said the shepherd. "He was
sticking half-way out of the cave, and seemed to be enjoying of
the cool of the evening in a poetical sort of way. He was as big
as four cart-horses, and all covered with shiny scales--deep-blue
scales at the top of him, shading off to a tender sort o' green
below. As he breathed, there was that sort of flicker over his
nostrils that you see over our chalk roads on a baking windless
day in summer. He had his chin on his paws, and I should say he
was meditating about things. Oh, yes, a peaceable sort o' beast
enough, and not ramping or carrying on or doing anything
but what was quite right and proper. I admit all that. And yet,
what am I to do? SCALES, you know, and claws, and a tail for
certain, though I didn't see that end of him--I ain't USED to
'em, and I don't HOLD with 'em, and that's a fact!"

The Boy, who had apparently been absorbed in his book during his
father's recital, now closed the volume, yawned, clasped his
hands behind his head, and said sleepily:

"It's all right, father. Don't you worry. It's only a dragon."