admiring her old stone friend. To her amazement, however, as soon as his eyes fell on it he clapped his hand against his thigh, and burst out laughing. “By the Sun, Moon and Stars!” he cried, “here’s the answer to Portunus’s riddle: ‘the tree yet not a tree, the man yet not a man,’” and he repeated to Hazel the one consecutive sentence that Portunus had managed to enunciate. “‘Who has no arms and yet can strike, who is dumb and yet can tell secrets,’” she repeated after him. “Can you strike and tell secrets, old friend?” she asked whimsically, stroking the grey lichened stone. And then she
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