The children walked slower and closer together, in a state of excited expectation, and a kind of shuddering curiosity.

The melancholy tones and the falling water became more and more distinct, as they found themselves inclosed in a thick fir-wood; presently, however, an opening to the right showed itself, and then thickly wreathed with a wild growth of plants and heavily-leaved trees, the vault of a grotto revealed itself, within which, and in the distance, stood a large white figure, with aged head, long beard, crooked back, and goat's legs.

To his lips he held a pandean pipe, from which the extraordinary sounds appeared to proceed.

Little waterfalls leapt here and there from the rocks around, and then collected themselves at the foot of the statue in a large basin, in which the figure seemed, with a dreamy countenance, to contemplate himself and the leaf-garlanded entrance of the grotto.
The Candidate informed them that this was the Wood-god Pan; but what further information he gave respecting the faith of the ancients in this deity of nature was listened to by nobody but the Queen-bee, who, however, shook her wise head over the want of wisdom in the Grecians who could believe on such a god; and by Elise, who loved to discover in the belief of antiquity a God of nature, which makes itself felt also in our days, but in a truer and, as we think, a diviner sense.
The exhibition in the grotto had produced its effect upon all the spectators, great as well as small; but the brain of the little Petrea seemed quite intoxicated, not to say crazed by it.

The Wood-god, with his music, his half-animal, half-human figure, although only of gypsum, and, as the Candidate declared, the offspring only of a dim fancy, as well as that it was without life or actuality, still remained to her imagination a living existence, as real as wonderful.