It was a beautiful night, lit by the rising moon and a million stars. Mild almost as a night in summer, voiceless as the tomb, cloudless and perfect. The great stars, winter-clear, burned right down to the roof of the woods, and amidst the trees the moonlight made Fairyland of the glades. Listening, one could hear occasionally the cry of an owl, and occasionally, a great way off, from the neighbourhood of the Galtee woods, the bark of a fox.

Mr Boxall descended the steps and glanced around; it was a few minutes past half-past ten, but there was no trace or sign of Miss Lestrange. A chill came to his heart: the monstrous idea, “Can I have been fooled?” crossed his mind, and was banished. He stepped from the gravelled drive to the grass and stood for a moment inhaling the balmy air and looking around him.

In the middle of the lawn there was a great old sundial supported by a group of fauns and satyrs, moss-grown and mysterious. Mr Boxall’s eye fell on this thing, and just at that moment, over the top of the sundial, appeared a face. It was not the face of Miss Lestrange, it was a round and tallow-white face—the face, in fact, of Micky Mooney.

Micky beckoned, and Mr Boxall drew close till he got within touching distance of the sundial.

“Are yiz Misther Oxhall?” asked Micky in a low and confidential voice, plucking at the moss on the sundial as he spoke, and seeming to address it.

“I am,” said Mr Boxall, recognising his name in the inversion. “What’s all this—where is the lady?”

“Beyant there in the trees,” said Micky, detaching himself from the sundial and making off in the direction of the trees, followed by the other. “I’m to show her to yiz, if y’ll be afther follyin’ me; says he to me, says he, ‘Wait be the sundile till the big clock lets one bang out of it afther it’s sthruck tin, and y’ll see a gintleman wid a big white face,’ says he, ‘and you lade him to see the lady,’ he says, ‘or it’s a kick I’ll be givin’ you, same as Larry Lyburn, instid of a sixpence wid a howl in it,’ he says.”

“Who says?” asked Mr Boxall, in high dudgeon. “What are you talking about? Who told you to wait for me?”

“Sure, that would be tellin’,” said Micky, who was trotting by the other’s side, gambolling with his shadow in the moonlight.

Mr Boxall tramped on in silence, utterly exasperated and confounded. The gambols of the half-witted creature beside him might have given him a hint that something was wrong in the affair. But he was determined to see the thing through.

They crossed the parkland and entered the wood. The moonlight falling between the leafless branches on the withered ferns made a picture wonderfully beautiful and weird.

“Now, which way? Go on—what are you stopping for?” said Mr Boxall, as his guide halted and held up a finger.

An owl crying in the depths of the trees had been answered by its mate.

“Listen to the cucks crowin’!” said Micky.

“Damn the cocks!” cried Mr Boxall. “Go on—where is the lady?”

“I dinno,” said Micky; “but if yiz’l listen yiz’l hear her vice, and it’s ‘Micky, come afther me,’ she always does be cryin’. Aal dressed in white she is, wid a crown of gowld on her head, and it’s ‘Micky, come afther me,’ she does be cryin’. Whisht!”

“Why, dash it—it’s a lunatic!” cried Mr Boxall.

“Whisht!” said Micky, bending down, resting his hands on his knees and presenting an ear towards the ground, “I hear her fut.”

The next moment he had vanished from the scene. It was just as if Mr Boxall had kicked him into space.

“D—d lunatic!” said Mr Boxall, nursing his foot.

He made his way out from amidst the trees; as he left their shelter the solemn tones of the house clock striking eleven came floating across the park. From the woods the far-away whooping and shouting of the visionary, still impelled and still running, came like a voice heard in dreamland.