all the while. Then suddenly Asop sprang up, stood and stiffened, and
gave a short bark. Someone coming to the hut! I pulled off my cap
quickly, and heard Edwarda's voice already at the door. Kindly and
without ceremony she and the Doctor had come to pay me a visit, as they
had said.

"Yes," I heard her say, "he is at home." And she stepped forward, and
gave me her hand in her simple girlish way. "We were here yesterday, but
you were out," she said.

She sat down on the rug over my wooden bedstead and looked round the
hut; the Doctor sat down beside me on the long bench. We talked, chatted
away at ease; I told them things, such as what kinds of animals there
were in the woods, and what game I could not shoot because of the closed
season. It was the closed season for grouse just now.

The Doctor did not say much this time either, but catching sight of my
powder-horn, with a figure of Pan carved on it, he started to explain
the myth of Pan.

"But," said Edwarda suddenly, "what do you live on when it's closed
season for all game?"

"Fish," I said. "Fish mostly. But there's always something to eat."

"But you might come up to us for your meals," she said. "There was an
Englishman here last year--he had taken the hut--and he often came to us
for meals."

Edwarda looked at me and I at her. I felt at the moment something