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* Le meunier qui la voit venir
Ne peut s’empecher de lui dire:
Attachez la votre ane,
Ma p’tite Mam’sell’ Marianne,
Attachez la votre ane Martin
Qui vous mene au moulin.

“The lake, Honey-Bee! See the lake, the lake, the lake!”

“Yes, George, the lake!”

George shouted “hurrah” and flung his hat in the air. Honey-Bee was too proper to fling hers up also, so taking off the shoe that wouldn’t stay on she threw it joyfully over her head.

There lay the lake in the depths of the valley and its curved and sloping banks made a framework of foliage and flowers about its silver waves. It lay there clear and tranquil, and one could see the swaying of the indistinct green of its banks.

But the children could find no path through the underbrush that would lead to its beautiful waters.

While they were searching for one their legs were nipped by some geese driven by a little girl dressed in a sheepskin and carrying a switch. George asked her name.

“Gilberte.”

“Well, then, Gilberte, how can one go to the lake?”

“Folks doesn’t go.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

“But supposing folks did?”

“If folks did there’d be a path, and one would take that path.”

George could think of no adequate reply to this guardian of the geese.

“Let’s go,” he said, “farther on we shall be sure to find a way through the woods.”

“And we will pick nuts and eat them,” said Honey-Bee, “for I am hungry. The next time we go to the lake we must bring a satchel full of good things to eat.”

“That we will, little sister,” said George. “And I quite agree with Francoeur, our squire, who when he went to Rome, took a ham with him, in case he should hunger, and a flask lest he should be thirsty. But hurry, for it is growing late, though I don’t know the time.”

“The shepherdesses know by looking at the sun,” said Honey-Bee; “but I am not a shepherdess. Yet it seems to me that when we left the sun was over our head, and now it is down there, far behind the town and castle of Clarides. I wonder if this happens every day and what it means?”

While they looked at the sun a cloud of dust rose up from the high road, and they saw some cavaliers with glittering weapons ride past at full speed. The children hid in the underbrush in great terror. “They are thieves or probably ogres,” they thought. They were really guards sent by the Duchess of Clarides in search of the little truants.

The two little adventurers found a footpath in the underbrush, not a lovers’ lane, for it was impossible to walk side by side holding hands as is the fashion of lovers. Nor could the print of human footsteps be seen, but only indentations left by innumerable tiny cloven feet.

“Those are the feet of little devils,” said Honey-Bee.

“Or deer,” suggested George.

The matter was never explained. But what is certain is that the footpath descended in a gentle slope towards the edge of the lake which lay before the two children in all its languorous and silent beauty. The willows surrounded its banks with their tender foliage. The slender blades of the reeds with their delicate plumes swayed lightly over the water. They formed tremulous islands about which the water-lilies spread their great heart-shaped leaves and snow-white flowers. Over these blossoming islands dragon-flies, all emerald or azure, with wings of flame, sped their shrill flight in suddenly altered curves.

The children plunged their burning feet with joy in the damp sand overgrown with tufted horse-tails and the reed-mace with its slender lance. The sweet flag wafted towards them its humble fragrance and the water plantain unrolled about them its filaments of lace on the margin of the sleeping waters which the willow-herb starred with its purple flowers.

VIII

Wherein we shall see what happened to George of Blanchelande
because he approached the lake in which the nixies dwel