Adalo's glance followed the little creature's bound, which really resembled flying.

But meanwhile, from amid the dense foliage in the centre of the tree a figure clad in the dress of a girl slid nimbly down the trunk, and as soon as she reached the ground, smoothed her garments carefully from her knees to her ankles. With her dainty, sparkling beauty, her almost childlike delicacy of form, this apparition looked less like a mortal maiden than a spirit of light.

She wore no cloak. Her white linen robe, with its cherry-red border and girdle of the same hue a hand's breadth wide, left her neck and arms bare; her complexion, wherever any portion of her almost too slenderly moulded figure was visible, gleamed with the dazzling whiteness of ivory; the unusually heavy dark-red eyebrows, which nearly met in the centre but were beautifully arched, frowned threateningly, and her clear blue eyes were now flashing with wrath. The vision attracted rather by the vivacious charm of expression and the perfect symmetry of her dainty figure than by regular beauty. For it must be confessed, though the charming inquisitive little nose did not actually turn up--by no means--it was really a little too short. And, as it sloped sharply away at the end, the space between it and the upper lip became too long, thereby giving the oval face when in repose an expression half of alert surprise, half of mischievous wilfulness.

Everything about this dainty dragon-fly was so delicate that the young girl might easily have been taken for a child, had not her rounded bust revealed her womanhood. Wonderfully charming was the little mouth, whose lips were so full that they seemed to pout mirthfully, while their hue rivalled the red border of her robe. A dimple in the chin and a slight tendency to a double chin lent the face that innocent sweetness without which woman's beauty fails to attract.

The most remarkable thing about this elfin vision was her hair--hair whose bright red hue was the very tint of flame--which rippled around her brow and temples in a thousand wilful little ringlets as if each individual one curled separately. They seemed to frame the face protectingly, as thorns cluster about a rosebud. The rest of her locks, after the Suabian fashion, were combed upward toward the crown, knotted there, and then flowed in magnificent tawny waves, somewhat darker in tint, over her dazzlingly white neck far below her waist.

The expression of saucy defiance, inquisitive surprise, nay even superiority, enhanced by this arrangement of the hair, was still further heightened by the little creature's habit of raising her heavy eyebrows as if in mingled astonishment and reproof. In the charm of the contradiction lay a temptation to smile which this fragile elf, with her pert little nose and sparkling blue eyes, seamed to discover--and if necessary instantly resent.

An extremely strong will, a hot, ungovernable temper, and the sweetness of a half unfolded bud, were contrasts which provoked a smile--nay, almost irresistibly awakened a desire to try what the impetuous little thing would do if her swift wrath were aroused. But when she raised her eyes with a more gentle expression, they were so bewitchingly beautiful, so pure, so tender, so soulful, that enthusiastic admiration made the spectator forget the inclination to tease her.

True, at this moment the elf looked by no means angelic, but thoroughly evil, as, darting only one swift glance of furious rage at the tall young noble, she seized the old woman violently by the shoulder and in a low voice stifled by suppressed fury--cried: "Grandmother!--Away!--To the marshes! Zercho the bondman must guide us. Away!"

"Gently, child, gently! Did not you hear? It will be safer on the mountain."

"Safer perhaps for us; but not for those whom we--no, whom I should then be near. Go," she cried furiously to the youth, "save yourself, I advise you, from the red-hair. 'False and spitting her ire like the fox and the fire.' Was that the way it ran, you witty fellow? As soon as the daughter of our neighbor Ero, giggling with spiteful mirth, told me your last jibe against me, I climbed the hay-ladder to the ridge-pole of our house and painted our white star up there red: painted it very thick and bright, so that you could see it from the edge of the forest and keep far away from the evil color. Very far--do you hear?"