a farmer priding himself on a flock of sheep that I knew were
really a most merry company of dryads and fauns in disguise. I
had but to make the sign of the cross, sprinkle some holy water
upon them, and call them by their sweet secret names, and the
whole rout had been off to the woods, with mad gambol and song,
before the eyes of the astonished farmer.

It was so with Hebe. She was really a little gold-haired
blue-eyed dryad, whose true home was a wild white cherry-tree
that grew in some scattered woodland behind the old country-house
of my boyhood. In spring- time how that naughty tree used to
flash its silver nakedness of blossom for miles across the furze
and scattered birches!

I might have known it was Hebe.

Alas! it no longer bares its bosom with so dazzling a
prodigality, for it is many a day since it was uprooted. The
little dryad long since fled away weeping,--fled away, said evil
tongues, fled away to the town.

Well do I remember our last meeting. Returning home one evening,
I met her at the lodge-gate hurrying away. Our loves had been
discovered, and my mother had shuddered to think that so pagan a
thing had lived so long in a Christian house. I vowed--ah! what
did I not vow?--and then we stole sadly together to comfort our
aching hearts under cover of the woodland. For the last time the
wild cherry-tree bloomed,--wonderful blossom, glittering with
tears, and gloriously radiant with stormy lights of wild passion
and wilder hopes.