on every tree, and nothing was to be seen but his own shadow;
nothing was to be heard but the sound of the rippling stream.

He threw off his clothes, and was just about to dive in headlong,
when something--he did not know what--suddenly caused him to look
round. At the same instant the moon passed from behind a cloud,
and its rays fell on a beautiful golden-haired woman standing
half hidden by the ferns.

With one bound he caught up his mantle, and rushed headlong down
the path he had come, fearing at each step to feel a hand laid on
his shoulder. It was not till he had left the last trees behind
him, and was standing in the open plain, that he dared to look
round, and then he thought a figure in white was still standing
there waving her arms to and fro. This was enough; he ran along
the road harder than ever, and never paused till he was save in
his own room.

With the earliest rays of dawn he went back to the forest to see
whether he could find any traces of the Yara, but though he
searched every clump of bushes, and looked up every tree,
everything was empty, and the only voices he heard were those of
parrots, which are so ugly that they only drive people away.

'I think I must be mad,' he said to himself, 'and have dreamt all
that folly'; and going back to the city he began his daily work.
But either that was harder than usual, or he must be ill, for he
could not fix his mind upon it, and everybody he came across
during the day inquired if anything had happened to give him that
white, frightened look.