* Author : Saki (the pen name of H. H. Munro)

* Narrator : Graeme Dunlop

* Host : Rachael K. Jones

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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First published in The Westminster Gazette, May 1909

Rated PG

Gabriel-Ernest

by Saki (the pen name of H. H. Munro)

What Van Cheele saw on this particular afternoon was, however, something far removed from his ordinary range of experience. On a shelf of smooth stone overhanging a deep pool in the hollow of an oak coppice a boy of about sixteen lay asprawl, drying his wet brown limbs luxuriously in the sun. His wet hair, parted by a recent dive, lay close to his head, and his light-brown eyes, so light that there was an almost tigerish gleam in them, were turned towards Van Cheele with a certain lazy watchfulness. It was an unexpected apparition, and Van Cheele found himself engaged in the novel process of thinking before he spoke. Where on earth could this wild-looking boy hail from? The miller’s wife had lost a child some two months ago, supposed to have been swept away by the mill-race, but that had been a mere baby, not a half-grown lad.