A young man on his way to South Africa-(do not be alarmed, this tale has nothing to do with the Boer War), and not knowing whether he will have the luck to come home or only to become, after a very little time, one of those names in parallel columns on the tablet in the church at home. In such a young man, family feeling runs high-the call of the blood is listened to with an attentive courtesy which it does not at all other times command. And relations in quite remote spots will on occasions like this receive farewell visits from young men of such families as are families-not in the county but in the patriarchal sense.Therefore Edmund Templar went down into Hampshire to see his aunt and uncle. Edmund Templar, corporal in the C.I.V.-I implore you to check your uneasy surmises. I give you my word of honour that there are no veldts or kopjes or Boers in my pages. Not an ox shall be outspanned, not a mealie baked. Have courage, and read on. There is no fighting in the story, and it all happened in England. Most of it is very romantic, and some of it is rather horrible. If Edmund Templar, who is, I scorn to deny it, my hero, goes to South Africa, he goes alone. We will not, I pledge you my honour, go with him.At present, however, he is not going to South Africa, but to Reka Dom, which lies on the border of the New Forest. Here, again, I beg to reassure you. There is nothing about Russia in this story. Not a bomb, not a knout, not so much as a political tract. No samovar broods hissing o'er my pages, no secret societies whisper and explode. You are safe from vodka, from sledges, wolves, and princesses who are spies. The house was called Reka Dom just because the aunt in her young days had read Mrs. Ewing, and because the house had grounds which, at some length, ran down to the river that sprawls among king-cups in the Ringwood water meadows, and runs under the bridge of many arches in that pleasant town.Mr. Templar wished, quite nicely and affectionately, to see his relations once again before he left England. Also, he wished, with all his heart and soul, to see once more the New Forest so he detrained-a military expression which I regret and will not repeat-at Lyndhurst, and walked through the greenness to his uncle's house.You know what the New Forest is like? When you see it for the first time it teaches you the meaning of words you had never understood before. You then for the first time know what glades mean, for example, and vistas, and mist and bracken; and "monarch of the grove," a phrase you always laughed at and still dislike, does yet begin to have a sort of meaning.It was not for the first time that Edmund saw the forest, so he threw himself into its green embrace as a lover, homecoming, throws himself into his mistress's dear arms that have been waiting for him long."At last!" the forest seemed to say, for offering its green embrace.Edmund thought of South Africa, and filled his lungs with the soft, sweet air of home; and presently he threw himself down to rest, and sniffed deep with great contentment. There is no scent like the scent of bruised bracken. He lay looking through the straight bracken stems that are themselves a forest. And to him came soft lights, little forest noises,-the hum of a wild bee, the scutter of a squirrel, and the stealthy glide of something long and swift under dead leaves that hardly rustled to its passing.All these, sounds caressed his ear. Then among them came a sound that was not a caress, but a challenge. The strangest sound: through the bracken forest, music-single notes-an air, familiar, yet unrecognised. Thus and not otherwise might Pan have piped to nymphs, among other woods, in other days than these. Templar pleased himself for a while with the fancy of Pan haunting these woods through the long ages, revealing himself only to worshippers rare and approved.