And then the false shadow appeared again on the ground, scarce noticeable had he not chanced to see it the evening before at a time when his eyes were downcast, less noticeable than the faintest of earthly shadows that will sometimes fall from a small unsuspected light, but enough to warn Ramon Alonzo that he must hide and slink and follow the ways of outlaws. Not far from him now was the forest that sheltered his home, and above a dark edge of it he could see a gable upon his father’s house beginning to gleam in the morning. Yet not now could he seek his home: he must wait till the long shadows that were about to roam the fields had shrunk to a length that was somewhat less than man’s. He hastened on to reach the nearest part of the forest before the sunrise should expose his deficiency to whomever might be abroad in the clear morning. So he left the road and took his way to the forest.
The sun rose before he gained the shade of the trees, but no man was yet abroad, and only a dog from a sleeping cottager’s house saw the man with the short shadow hurrying over the grass upon which no other shadow was less than its master. Among shadows more enormous than the sound solid rocks the dog came up with him, its suspicions well aroused, probably by the queer unearthly appearance that the short shadow gave Ramon Alonzo rather than by any exact observation that his shadow was not the right length; but this we cannot know, for neither the wisdom of dogs nor the wisdom of men is as yet entirely understood by the other, though great advances have already been made: one has only to mention such names as Arnold Wilkinton, Sir Murray Jenkins, Rover, Fido, and Towser.
The dog followed at first sniffing; then he came up close and took one long sniff at Ramon Alonzo’s left leg, and stopped and sat down satisfied. Presently he thought to bark, and gave four or five short barks as a matter of duty; but that human scent that he got had been enough, and he showed none of that fury of suspicion and anger that men had shown in the village of Aragona. Ramon Alonzo was enormously heartened by this, for he saw that whatever magic there had been, and although he was able to cast no natural shadow, yet his body was still human: he trusted the dog for that. And then the dog, feeling that he had not perhaps quite given warning enough against this stranger that strolled by his master’s house so early, barked three or four times again. But this in no way checked Ramon Alonzo’s newly found cheerfulness; for the dog might have howled. The young man went on and came to the shade of the forest, while the dog got up and walked slowly back to his barrel, whence he had first been attracted by the curiously spiritual figure that Ramon Alonzo cut in the landscape at that hour, which had not seemed at first sight satisfactory.
Through the forest Ramon Alonzo hastened towards his home; and yet haste was of no use to him, for he came as near to the garden’s edge as it was safe to come long before he dared show himself. Hungry, though watching the windows of his own home, in hiding even from his own parents and sister, he lay on some moss in the forest near the end of the white balustrade, waiting for the hour in which all human shadows would be a little bit shorter than men. And as he waited he saw Mirandola coming into the garden: he saw her walk by paths and shrubs that they both knew so well, and past small lawns on which they had played, as it seemed to him, almost forever. He longed to call to her to come to the forest; and yet he would not, for he knew not what to say, and would not let her know the price he had paid to obtain the vial she needed. And he durst not come to her, so he stayed where he was, and the slow shadows shortened.
Not enough light reached him in the forest by which to judge the length of other shadows, so he tried to watch the length of Mirandola’s, still walking in the garden. But when Mirandola came to the end of the garden that was nearest the edge of the forest he could not raise his head to look without causing dried things in the thicket to crackle, so that she might have heard him; and when she turned back in her walk he was soon unable to see her shadow clearly, even when he stood up. So he watched a small statue that there was on the lawn, in marble, of a nymph, such as haunted the brake no longer, as men were beginning to say; and he saw its shadow dwindle. And when the time was very nearly come that the shadows of all things else would be as his, and already the difference was not to be easily noticed, Ramon Alonzo walked from the wood. Mirandola saw him at once coming over the open between the balustrade and the dark of the forest, and ran down one of the paths of the garden towards him. But all things are not shaped towards perfect moments; and, as they ran to meet, their father and mother appeared, coming towards that part of the garden.
“I have the potion,” said Ramon Alonzo.
And without a word Mirandola took the vial, and secreted it. So swiftly passed her hand from his to
