Nymphs were
sometimes caught that way, and modern science seems to be reverting more
and more closely to the simpler truths of the classics which, in our
ignorance and arrogance, we once dismissed as fables unworthy of
scientific notice.
[Illustration: "He played on his concertina ... on the chance that the
music might lure a cave-girl down the hill."]
However this Broadway faun piped in vain: no white-footed dryad came
stealing through the ferns to gaze, perhaps to dance to the concertina's
plaintive melodies.
So after a while he put his concertina into his pocket, cocked his derby
hat on one side, gathered his little bandy legs under his person, and
squatted there in silence, chewing the wet and bitter end of his extinct
cigar.
Toward mid-afternoon I unslung my field-glasses again and surveyed the
hill.
At first I noticed nothing, not even a buzzard; then, of a sudden, my
attention was attracted to something moving among the fern-covered slabs
of coquina just above where we lay concealed--a slim, graceful shape half
shadowed under a veil of lustrous hair which glittered like gold in the
sun.
"Mink!" I whispered hoarsely.
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