If our prayers were heard only in accordance with the idea of God to which we seem to ourselves to pray, how miserably would our infinite wants be met! But every honest cry, even if sent into the deaf ear of an idol, passes on to the ears of the unknown God, the heart of the unknown Father.
"O God, help me home again," cried Ginevra, and stood up in her great loneliness to return.
The same instant she spied, seated upon a stone, a little way off, but close to her path, the beast-boy.

There could be no mistake.
He was just as she had heard him described by the children at the gamekeeper's cottage.

That was his hair sticking all out from his head, though the sun in it made it look like a crown of gold or a shining mist.

Those were his bare arms, and that was dreadful indeed! Bare legs and feet she was used to; but bare arms! Worst of all, making it absolutely certain he was the beast-boy, he was playing upon a curious kind of whistling thing, making dreadfully sweet music to entice her nearer that he might catch her and tear her to pieces! Was this the answer God sent to the prayer she had offered in her sore need--the beast-boy?
She asked him for protection and deliverance, and here was the beast-boy! She asked him to help her home, and there, right in the middle of her path, sat the beast-boy, waiting for her! Well, it was just like what they said about him on Sundays in the churches, and in the books Miss Machar made her read! But the horrid creature's music should not have any power over her! She would rather run down to the black water, glooming in those holes, and be drowned, than the beast-boy should have her to eat! Most girls would have screamed, but such was not Ginny's natural mode of meeting a difficulty.

With fear, she was far more likely to choke than to cry out.