He
knew his wood as well as any of them. He could make lairs beneath the
hollies, glide imperceptibly among the trees, crawl on his belly from
tussock to tussock, and startle the very foxes by creeping quite close
before they smelled peril. So he hid and glided as the sun climbed the
sky, and then waited and watched when the sun was high, now here, now
there, but always very near the open rides along which people would be
passing. And that day many passed, but not the man he wanted.
He was three days and nights in the wood; and on the morning of the
fourth day somebody saw him.
He had moved stealthily to the stream to drink, and while creeping
back on hands and knees among some holly bushes by a glade, he paused
suddenly. Out there on the grass, so small that she had not shown
above the lowest bushes, there was a little girl--a child of about
five, in a tattered pinafore, picking daisies and making a daisy
chain. Breathless and with a beating heart, he watched her, and he
dared not move forward into the sunlight or backward into the shade.
She had not seen him yet. She was playing with the chain of flowers--a
small wood goblin sprung out of nowhere, a little black-haired devil
fired up from hell through the solid earth and out into this empty
glade to squat there right in his track.
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