 XV. Alexander. When will you finish Campaspi? Lili's Campaspi. And now, what song should I sing to unveil my Isis, if indeed she was present unseen? I hurried away to the white hall of fantasy, heedless of the innumerable forms of beauty that crowded my way. These might cross my eyes, but the unseen filled my brain. I wandered long, up and down the silent space. No songs came. My soul was not still enough for songs. Only in the silence and darkness of the soul's night do those stars of the inward firmament sink to its lower surface from the singing realms beyond, and shine upon the conscious spirit. Here all effort was unveiling. If they came not, they could not be found. Next night it was just the same. I walked through the red glimmer of the silent hall, but lonely as there I walked, as lonely trod my soul up and down the halls of the brain. At last I entered one of the statue halls. The dance had just commenced, and I was delighted to find that I was free of their assembly. I walked on till I came to the sacred corner. There I found the pedestal, just as I had left it, with the faint glimmer as of white feet still resting on the dead black. As soon as I saw it, I seemed to feel a presence which longed to become visible, and as it were called to me to gift it with self-manifestation that it might shine on me. The power of song came to me, but the moment my voice, though I sang low and soft, stirred the air of the hall, the dancers started. The quick interweaving crowd shook, lost its form, divided, each figure sprang to its pedestal and stood, a self-evolving life no more, but a rigid, lifelike marble shape, with the whole form composed into the expression of a single state or act. Silence rolled like a spiritual thunder through the grand space. My song had ceased, scared at its own influences. But I saw in the hand of one of the statues close by me a harp whose cords yet quivered. I remembered that as she bounded past me, her sharp had brushed against my arm, so the spell of the marble had not enfolded it. I sprang to her and with a gesture of entreaty laid my hand on the harp. The marble hand, probably from its contact with the uncharmed harp, had strength enough to relax its hold and yield the harp to me. No other motion indicated life. Instinctively I struck the cords and sang, and not to break upon the record of my song I mention here, that as I sang the first four lines the loveliest feet became clear upon the black pedestal. And ever as I sang it was as if a veil were being lifted up from before the form, but an invisible veil, so that the statue appeared to grow before me, not so much by evolution as by infinitesimal degrees of added height. And while I sang I did not feel that I stood by a statue, as indeed it appeared to be, but that a real woman's soul was revealing itself by successive stages of embodiment and consequent manifestation and expression. Weight of beauty, firmly planting, arches wide on rosy heel, whence the life spring throbbing, panting, pulses upward to reveal, fairest things no least despising, foot and earth meet tenderly, tis the woman resting rising upward to sublimity. Rise the limbs sedately sloping, strong and gentle, full and free, soft and low like certain hoping, drawing nigh the broad firm knee. Up to speech, as up to roses pants the life from leaf to flower, so each blending change discloses, nearer still, expressions power. Low, fair sweeps, white surges twining up and outward fearlessly, temple columns close combining, lift a holy mystery. Part of mind, what strange surprises mount aloft on such a stair. Some great vision upward rises, curving, bending, floating, fair. Bands and sweeps and hill and hollow lead my fascinated eye. Some apocalypse will follow, some new world of deity. Zoned unseen and outward swelling, with new thoughts and wonders rife, queenly majesty foretelling, see the expanding house of life. Sudden heaving, unforbidden size, eternal, still the same. Mounts of snow have summits hidden in the mists of uttered flame. But the spirit, dawning nearly, finds no speech for earnest pain. Finds a soundless sighing merely, builds its stairs and mounts again. Heart, the queen with secret hoping, sendeth out her waiting pair. Bands blind hands, half blindly groping, half enclasping, visions rare. And the great arms, heartways bending, might of beauty, drawing home their returning and reblending, where from roots of love they roam. Build thy slopes of radiance beamy spirit, fair with womanhood. Tower thy precipice, white gleamy, climb unto the hour of good. Some space will be rent asunder, now the shining column stands, ready to be crowned with wonder by the builder's joyous hands. All the lines abroad are spreading, like a fountain's falling race. Low, the chin, first feature treading, airy foot to rest the face. Speeches nigh, oh see the blushing, sweet approach of lip and breath. Round the mouth dim silence, hushing, waits to die ecstatic death. Pan across in trouble curving, bow of promise upper lip. Set them free with gracious swerving, let the wing-words float and dip. Dumb art thou, oh love immortal, more than words thy speech must be, childless yet the tender portal of the home of melody. Now the nostrils open fearless, proud and calm unconsciousness. Sure it must be something peerless that the great pan would express. Deepens, crowds some meaning tender, in the pure, dear lady face. Low a blinding burst of splendor, tis the free soul's issuing grace. Two calm lakes of molten glory circling round unfathomed deeps. Lightning flashes transitory, cross the gulfs where darkness sleeps. This the gated last of gladness, to the outward striving me, in a reign of light and sadness, out its loves and longings flee. With a presence I am smitten, dumb with a foreknown surprise, presence greater yet than written even in the glorious eyes. Through the gulfs with inward gazes I may look till I am lost, wandering deep in spirit mazes in a sea without a coast. Windows open to the glorious, time and space, oh far beyond. Woman, ah, thou art victorious, and I perish overfond. Springs aloft the yet unspoken in the forehead's endless grace, full of silences unbroken, infinite, unfeatured face. Domes above the mount of wonder, height and hollow wrapped at night, hiding in its caverns under women, nations in their might. Passing forms the highest human faints away to the divine, which is none of man or woman can unveil the holiest shine. Sideways, grooved to porches only visible to passing eye, stand at the silent, doorless, lonely entrance gates of melody. But all sounds fly in as boldly, groan and song, and kiss and cry at their galleries, lifted coldly, darkly, twix the earth and sky. Beauty, thou art spent, thou knowest so, in faint half glad to spare. On the summit thou o'erflowest in a fall of torrent hair, hiding what thou hast created in a half-transparent shroud, thus, with glorious soft debated, shines the moon through vapory cloud. 16 Even the sticks, which ninefold her in foldeth, hymns not Saris's daughter in its flow. But she grasps the apple, ever holdeth her sad orcus, down below. Schiller, das ideal und das Leben. Ever as I sang, the veil was uplifted. Ever as I sang, the signs of life grew. Still when the eyes dawned upon me, it was with that sunrise of splendor which my feeble song attempted to re-emboddy. The wonder is that I was not altogether overcome, but was able to complete my song as the unseen veil continued to rise. This ability came solely from the state of mental elevation which I found myself. Only because uplifted in song was I able to endure the blaze of the dawn. But I cannot tell whether she looked more of statue or more of woman. She seemed removed into that region of fantasy where all is intensely vivid, but nothing clearly defined. At last, as I sang of her descending hair, the glow of soul faded away like a dying sunset. A lamp within had been extinguished, and the house of life shone blank in a winter morn. She was a statue once more. But visible, and that was much gained. Yet the revulsion from hope and fruition was such that, unable to restrain myself, I sprang to her, and in defiance of the law of the place, flung my arms around her as if I would tear her from the grasp of a visible death, and lifted her from the pedestal down to my heart. But no sooner had her feet ceased to be in contact with the black pedestal than she shuddered and trembled all over. Then writhing from my arms before I could tighten their hold, she sprang into the corridor with the reproachful cry, You should not have touched me, darted behind one of the exterior pillars of the circle, and disappeared. I followed almost as fast, but ere I could reach the pillar, the sound of a closing door, the saddest of all sounds sometimes, fell on my ear. And arriving at the spot where she had vanished I saw, lighted by a pale yellow lamp which hung above it, a heavy, rough door, altogether unlike any others I had seen in the palace. For they were all of ebony, or ivory, or covered with silver plates, or of some odorous wood and very ornate, whereas this seemed of old oak, with heavy nails and iron studs. Notwithstanding the precipitation of my pursuit I could not help reading in silver letters beneath the lamp. No one enters here without the leave of the Queen. But what was the Queen to me when I followed my white lady? I dashed the door to the wall and sprang through, low I stood on a waist-windy hill. Great stones, like tombstones, stood all about me. No door, no palace was to be seen. A white figure gleamed past me, ringing her hands and crying, Ah! you should have sung to me! you should have sung to me! and disappeared behind one of the stones. I followed. A cold gust of wind met me from behind the stone, and when I looked I saw nothing but a great hole in the earth into which I could find no way of entering. Had she fallen in? I could not tell. I must wait for the daylight. I sat down and wept, for there was no help. CHAPTER XVII First I thought, almost despairing, this must crush my spirit now, yet I bore it, and I'm baring, only do not ask me how. HINE When the daylight came it brought the possibility of action, but with it little of consolation. With the first visible increase of light I gazed into the chasm, but could not, for more than an hour, see sufficiently well to discover its nature. At last I saw it was almost a perpendicular opening, like a roughly excavated well, only very large. I could perceive no bottom, and it was not till the sun actually rose that I discovered a sort of natural staircase, in many parts little more than suggested, which led round and round the gulf descending spirally into its abyss. I saw at once that this was my path, and without a moment's hesitation glad to quit the sunlight which stared at me most heartlessly, I commenced my torturous descent. It was very difficult. In some parts I had to cling to the rocks like a bat. In one place I dropped from the track down upon the next returning spire of the stair, which being broad in this particular portion, and standing out from the wall at right angles, received me upon my feet safe, though somewhat stupefied by the shock. After descending a great way I found the stair ended at a narrow opening which entered the rock horizontally. Into this I crept, and having entered, had just room to turn around. I put my head out into the shaft by which I had come down and surveyed the course of my descent. Looking up I saw the stars, although the sun must by this time have been high in the heavens. Looking below I saw that the sides of the shaft went sheer, down, smooth as glass, and far beneath me I saw the reflection of the same stars I had seen in the heavens when I looked up. I turned again and crept inward some distance, when the passage widened and I was at length able to stand and walk upright. The stair and loftier grew the way. New paths branched off on every side. Great open halls appeared. Till at last I found myself wandering on through an underground country in which the sky was of rock and instead of trees and flowers there were only fantastic rocks and stones. And ever as I went darker grew my thoughts. Till at last I had no hope whatever of finding the white lady. I no longer called her to myself my white lady. Whenever a choice was necessary I always chose the path which seemed to lead downwards. At length I began to find that these regions were inhabited. From behind a rock a peel of harsh grating laughter full of evil humor rang through my ears and, looking round, I saw a queer goblin creature with the great head and ridiculous features, just such as those described in German histories and travels as cobalts. What do you want with me? I said. He pointed at me with a long forefinger very thick at the root and sharpened to a point and answered, Ha, ha, ha! What do you want here? Then, changing his tone, he continued with mock humility. Honored sir, vouch safe to withdraw from thy slaves the luster of thy august presence, for thy slaves cannot support its brightness. A second appeared and struck in, You are so big! You keep the sun from us! We can't see for you, and we are so cold. Thereupon arose on all sides the most terrific uproar of laughter, from voices like those of children in volume, but scramble and harsh as those of decrepit age, though, unfortunately without its weakness. The whole pandemonium of fairy devils of all varieties of fantastic ugliness, both in form and feature and of all sizes from one to four feet, seemed to have suddenly assembled about me. At length, after a great babble of talk among themselves, in a language unknown to me, and after seemingly endless gesticulation, consultation, elbow nudging, and unmitigated peals of laughter, they formed into a circle about one of their number who scrambled upon a stone, and, much to my surprise, and somewhat to my dismay, began to sing, in a voice corresponding in its nature to his talking one, from beginning to end the song with which I had brought the light into the eyes of the white lady. He sang the same air, too, and, all the time, maintained a face of mock and treaty and worship, accompanying the song with the travesty gestures of one playing on the lute. The whole assembly kept silence, except at the clothes of every verse when they roared and danced, and shouted with laughter, and flung themselves on the ground in real or pretended convulsions of delight. When he had finished, the singer threw himself from the top of the stone, turning heels overhead several times in his descent, and when he did a light, it was on the top of his head on which he hopped about, making the most grotesque gesticulations with his legs in the air. Inexpressible laughter followed, which broke up in a shower of tiny stones from enumerable hands. They could not materially injure me, although they cut me on the head and face. I attempted to run away, but they all rushed upon me, and, laying hold of every part that afforded a grasp, held me tight. Crowding about me like bees, they shouted an insect swarm of exasperating speeches up into my face, among which the most frequently recurring were, You shan't have her! You shan't have her! She's for a better man! How he'll kiss her! How he'll kiss her! The galvanic torrent of this battery of malevolence stung to life within me a spark of nobleness, and I said aloud, Well, if he is a better man, let him have her! They instantly let go their hold of me, and fell back a step or two, with a whole broadside of grunts and humps, as of an unexpected and disappointed approbation. I made a step or two forward, and a lane was instantly opened for me through the midst of the grinning little antics who bowed most politely to me on every side as I passed. After I had gone a few yards I looked back and saw them all standing quite still, looking after me like a great school of boys, till suddenly one turned round and with a loud whoop rushed into the midst of the others. In an instant the whole was one writhing and tumbling heap of contortion reminding me of the live pyramids of intertwined snakes of which travelers make report. As soon as one was worked out of the mass he bounded off a few paces and then, with a somersault and a run, threw himself gyrating into the air and descended with all his weight on the summit of the heaving and struggling chaos of fantastic figures. I left them still busy at this fierce and apparently aimless amusement, and as I went, I sang, If a nobler waits for thee, I will weep aside. It is well that thou shouldst be of the nobler bride. For if love builds up the home where the heart is free, homeless yet the heart must roam that has not found thee. One must suffer. I, for her, yield in her my part. Take her, thou art worthier. Still I be still, my heart. Gift ungotten, largesse high of a frustrate will. But to yield it lovingly is a something still. Then a little song arose of itself in my soul, and I felt for the moment while it sank sadly within me as if I was once more walking up and down the white hall of fantasy in the fairy palace. But this lasted no longer than the song as will be seen. Do not vex thy violet perfume to afford. Else no odor thou wilt get from its little horde. In thy lady's gracious eyes look not thou too long. Else from them the glory flies, and thou dost her wrong. Come not thou too near the maid, clasp her not too wild. Else the splendor is allayed, and thy heart beguiled. A crash of laughter, more discordant and deriding than any I had yet heard, invaded my ears. Looking on in the direction of the sound, I saw a little elderly woman, much taller, however, than the goblins I had just left, seated upon a stone by the side of the path. She rose as I drew near and came forward to meet me. She was very plain and commonplace in appearance, without being hideously ugly. Looking up in my face with a stupid sneer, she said, Isn't it a pity you haven't a pretty girl to walk all alone with you through this sweet country? How different everything would look, wouldn't it? Strange that one can never have what one would like best. How the roses would bloom and all that, even in this infernal hole. Wouldn't they, Anadas? Her eyes would light up the old cave, wouldn't they? That depends on who the pretty girl should be, replied I. Not so very much matter that, she answered. Look here! I had turned to go away as I gave my reply, but now I stopped and looked at her. As a rough, unsightly bud might suddenly blossom into the most lovely flower, or rather as a sunbeam bursts through a shapeless cloud and transfigures the earth, so burst a faith of her splendid beauty as it were through the unsightly visage of the woman, destroying it with the light as it dawned through it. A summer sky rose above me, gray with heat, across a shining slumbrous landscape, looked from afar the peaks of snow-capped mountains, and down from a great rock beside me fell a sheet of water, mad with its own delight. Stay with me, she said, lifting up her exquisite face and looking full in mine. I drew back. Again the infernal laugh graded upon my ears, again the rocks closed in around me and the ugly woman looked at me with wicked mocking hazel eyes. You shall have your reward, said she. You shall see your white lady again. That lies not with you, I replied, and turned and left her. She followed me with streak upon streak of laughter as I went on my way. I may mention here that although there was always light enough to see my path, and a few yards on every side of me, I never could find out the source of this sad, sepulchral illumination. CHAPTER 18 In the wind's uproar the seas raging grim and the sighs that are born in him. Hine. From dreams of bliss shall men awake, one day but not to weep. The dreams remain, they only break the mirror of the sleep. GEN. PALL. HESPRESS. How I got through this dreary part of my travels I do not know. I do not think I was upheld by the hope that any moment the light might break in upon me, for I scarcely thought about that. I went on with a dull endurance, varied by moments of uncontrollable sadness, for more and more the conviction grew upon me that I should never see the white lady again. It may seem strange that one with whom I had held so little communion should have so engrossed my thoughts. But benefits conferred awakened love in some minds, as surely as benefits received in others. Besides, being delighted and proud that my songs had called the beautiful creature to life, the same fact caused me to feel a tenderness unspeakable for her, accompanied with a kind of feeling of property in her. For so the goblin selfishness would reward the angel love. When to all this has added an overpowering sense of her beauty, and an unquestioning conviction that this was a true index to inward loveliness, it may be understood how it came to pass, that my imagination filled my whole soul with the play of its own multitudinous colors, and harmonies around the form which yet stood, a gracious marble radiance in the midst of its white hall of fantasy. The time passed by unheeded for my thoughts were busy. Perhaps this was also in part the cause of my needing no food, and never thinking how I should find any during the subterranious part of my travels. How long they endured, I could not tell, for I had no means of measuring time. And when I looked back, there was such a discrepancy between the decisions of my imagination and my judgment as to the length of time that had passed, that I was bewildered and gave up all attempts to arrive at any conclusion on the point. A gray mist continually gathered behind me. When I looked back towards the past, this mist was the medium through which my eyes had to strain for a vision of what had gone by, and the form of the white lady had receded into an unknown region. At length the country of rock began to close again around me, gradually and slowly narrowing till I found myself walking in a gallery of rock once more, both sides of which I could touch with my outstretched hands. It narrowed yet until I was forced to move carefully in order to avoid striking against the projecting pieces of rock. The roof sank lower and lower until I was compelled first to stoop and then to creep on my hands and knees. It recalled terrible dreams of childhood, but I was not much afraid because I felt sure that this was my path and my only hope of leaving fairy land, of which I was now almost weary. At length, on getting past an abrupt turn in the passage through which I had to force myself, I saw a few yards ahead of me, the long forgotten daylight shining through a small opening, to which the path, if path it could now be called, led me. With great difficulty I accomplished these last few yards and came forth to the day. I stood on the shore of a wintry sea with a wintry sun just a few feet above its horizon edge. It was bare and waste and gray. Hundreds of hopeless waves rushed constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon a beach of great loose stones that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of gray, nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of the breaking in the moan of the retreating wave. No rock lifted up the sheltering severity above the dreariness around. Even that from which I had myself emerged rose scarcely a foot above the opening by which I had reached the dismal day, more dismal even than the tomb I had left. A cold, deathlike wind swept across the shore, seeming to issue from a pale mouth of cloud upon the horizon. Sign of life was nowhere visible. I wandered over the stones up and down the beach, a human embodiment of the nature around me. The wind increased. Its keen waves flowed through my soul. The foam rushed higher up the stones, a few dead stars began to gleam in the east. The sound of the waves grew louder and yet more despairing. A dark curtain of cloud was lifted up and a pale blue rent shone between its foot and the edge of the sea, out from which rushed an icy storm of frozen wind that tore the waters into spray as it passed, and flung the billows and raving heaps upon the desolate shore. I could bear it no longer. I will not be tortured to death, I cried. I will meet it half way. The life within me is yet enough to bear me up the face of death. The life within me is yet enough to bear me up to the face of death, and then I die, unconquered. Before it had grown so dark I had observed, though without any particular interest, that on one part of the shore a low platform of rock seemed to run out far into the midst of the breaking waters. Towards this I now went, scrambling over smooth stones to which scarce even a particle of seaweed clung, and having found it I got on it, and followed its direction as near as I could guess out into the tumbling chaos. I could hardly keep my feet against the wind and sea. The waves repeatedly all but swept me off my path, but I kept on my way, till I reached the end of the low promontory, which in the fall of the waves rose a good many feet above the surface, and in their rise was covered with their waters. I stood one moment and gazed into the heaving abyss beneath me, then plunged headlong into the mounting wave below. A blessing like the kiss of a mother seemed to a light on my soul. A calm, deeper than that which accompanies a hope deferred, bathed my spirit. I sank far into the waters and sought not to return. I felt as if once more the great arms of the beech tree were around me, soothing me after the miseries I had passed through in telling me, like a little sick child, that I should be better to-morrow. The waters of themselves lifted me, as with loving arms to the surface. I breathed again but did not enclose my eyes. I would not look on the wintery sea and the pitiless gray sky. Thus I floated, till something gently touched me. It was a little boat floating beside me. How it came there I could not tell, but it rose and sank on the waters and kept touching me in its fall, as if with a human will to let me know that help was by me. It was a little gay-colored boat, seemingly covered with glistering scales like those of a fish, all a brilliant rainbow hues. I scrambled into it and lay down in the bottom, with a sense of exquisite repose. Then I drew over me a rich, heavy purple cloth that was beside me, and lying still, new by the sound of the waters that my little bark was fleeting rapidly onwards. Finding, however, none of that stormy motion which the sea had manifested when I beheld it from the shore, I opened my eyes. And looking first up, saw above me the deep violet sky of a warm southern night, and then lifting my head saw that I was sailing fast upon a summer sea in the last border of a southern twilight. The ariel of the sun yet shot the extreme faint tips of its longest rays above the horizon waves and withdrew them not. It was a perpetual twilight. The stars, great and earnest like children's eyes, bent down lovingly towards the waters, and the reflected stars within seemed to float up as if longing to amete their embraces. But when I looked down, a new wonder meant my view, for vaguely revealed beneath the wave I floated above my whole past. The fields of my childhood flitted by, the halls of my youthful labours, the streets of great cities where I had dwelt, and the assemblies of men and women where I had wearied myself seeking for rest. But so indistinct were the visions that sometimes I thought I was sailing on a shallow sea, and that strange rocks and forests of sea-plants beguiled my eye sufficiently to be transformed by the magic of the fantasy into well-known objects and regions. Yet at times a beloved form seemed to lie close beneath me in sleep, and the eyelids would tremble as if about to forsake the conscious eye, and the arms would heave upwards as if in dreams they sought for a satisfying presence. But these motions might come only from the heaving of the waters between those forms and me. Soon I fell asleep, overcome with fatigue and delight, in dreams of unspeakable joy, of restored friendships, of revived embraces, of love which said it had never died, of faces that had vanished long ago yet said with smiling lips that they knew nothing of the grave, of pardons implored and granted with such bursting floods of love that I was almost glad I had sinned. Thus I passed through this wondrous twilight. I awoke with the feeling that I had been kissed and loved to my heart's content, and found that my boat was floating motionless by the grassy shore of a little island. CHAPTER XIX IN STILL REST IN CHANGELESS SIMPLICITY I BEAR, UNINERUPTED THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE WHOLE HUMANITY WITHIN ME. SHLYERMUCKERS, MONOLIGIN. Such a sweetness, such a grace, in all thy speech appear, that what to the eye a beauteous face, that thy tongue is to the ear. COWLY. The water was deep to the very edge, and I sprang from the little bowed upon a soft grassy turf. The island seemed rich with the profusion of all grasses and low flowers. All delicate lowly things were most plentiful, but no trees rose skywards, not even a bush overtopped the tall grasses, except in one place near the cottage I'm about to describe, where a few plants of the gum cystus which drops every night all the blossoms that the day brings forth formed a kind of natural arbor. The whole island lay open to the sky and sea. It rose nowhere more than a few feet above the level of the waters which flowed deep all around its border. Here there seemed to be neither tide nor storm. A sense of persistent calm and fullness arose in the mind at the sight of the slow, pulse-like rise and fall of the deep, clear, unrippled waters against the bank of the island, for sure it could hardly be called, being so much more like the edge of a full, solemn river. As I walked over the grass toward the cottage, which stood at a little distance from the bank, all the flowers of childhood looked at me with perfect, child eyes out of the grass. My heart softened by the dreams through which it had passed, overflowed in a sad, tender love towards them. They looked to me like children impregnably fortified in a helpless confidence. The sun stood halfway down the western sky, shining very soft and golden, and there grew a second world of shadows amidst the world of grasses and wildflowers. The cottage was square with low halls and a high, pyramidal roof, thatched with long reeds, of which the withered blossoms hung over all the eaves. It is noticeable that most of the buildings I saw in Fairyland were cottages. There was no path through a door, nor, indeed, was there any track worn by footsteps in the island. The cottage rose right out of the smooth turf. It had no windows that I could see, but there was a door in the center of the side facing me, up to which I went. I knocked, and the sweetest voice I had ever heard said, Come in. I entered. A bright fire was burning on a hearth in the center of the earthen floor, and the smoke found its way out of an opening in the center of the pyramidal roof. Over the fire hung a little pot, and over the pot bent a woman face, the most wonderful I thought that I had ever beheld. For it was older than any countenance I had ever looked upon. There was not a spot in which a wrinkle could lie, where a wrinkle lay not. And the skin was ancient and brown, like old parchment. The woman's form was tall and spare, and when she stood up to welcome me, I saw that she was straight as an arrow. Could that voice of sweetness have issued from those lips of age? Mild as they were, could they be the portals when floed such melody? But the moment I saw her eyes I no longer wondered at her voice. They were absolutely young, those of a woman of five and twenty, large and of a clear gray. Girls had beset them all about. The eyelids themselves were old, and heavy and worn, but the eyes were very incarnations of soft light. She held out her hand to me, and the voice of sweetness again greeted me with the single word. Welcome! She said an old wooden chair from me near the fire, and went on with her cooking. A wondrous sense of refuge and repose came upon me. I felt like a boy who was got home from school miles across the hills, through a heavy storm of wind and snow. Almost as I gazed on her I sprang from my seat to kiss those old lips. And when, having finished her cooking, she brought some of the dish she had prepared and set it on a little table by me, covered with a snow-white cloth, I could not help laying my head on her bosom and bursting into happy tears. She put her arms round me, saying, Poor child! Poor child! As I continued to weep she gently disengaged herself, and taking a spoon put some of the food I did not know what it was to my lips and treating me most endearingly to swallow it. To please her I made an effort and succeeded. She went on feeding me like a baby with one arm round me till I looked up in her face and smiled. Then she gave me the spoon and told me to eat, for it would do me good. I obeyed her and found myself wonderfully refreshed. Then she drew near the fire an old-fashioned couch that was in the cottage and, making me lie down upon it, sat at my feet and began to sing. Amazing store of old ballads rippled from her lips over the pebbles of ancient tunes, and the voice that sang was sweet as the voice of a tuneful maiden that singeth ever from very fullness of song. The songs were almost all sad, but with a sound of comfort. One, I can faintly recall, it was something like this. Sir Agla Vale, through the churchyard road, sing All Alone I Lie. Little wrecked he where he yow'd All Alone up in the sky. Swerved his coarser and plunged with fear, All Alone I Lie. His cry might have wakened the dead man near, All Alone up in the sky. The very dead that lay at his feet lapped in the moldy winding-sheet. But he curbed him and spurred him until he stood still in his place like a horse of wood, with nostrils uplift and eyes wide and wan, but the sweat and streams from his fetlocks ran. A ghost grew out of the shadowy air and sat in the midst of her moony hair. In her gleamy hair she sat and wept. In the dreamful moon they lay and slept. The shadows above and the bodies below lay and slept in the moonbeam slow. And she sang like the moan of an autumn wind over the stubble left behind. Alas! how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much or a kiss too long! And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, and life is never the same again. Alas! how hardly things go right! Tis hard to watch on a summer night, for the sigh will come and the kiss will stay, and the summer night is a winter day. Oh lovely ghosts, my heart is woes, to see thee weeping and wailing so! Oh lovely ghosts, said the fearless knight, can the sword of a warrior set it right? Or prayer of beadsmen praying mild as a cup of water, a feverish child, soothe thee at last and dreamless mood, to sleep to sleep a dead lady should? Thine eyes they fill me with longing soar, as if I had known thee for ever more. Oh lovely ghosts, I could leave the day to sit with thee in the moon away. If thou wouldest trust me and lay thy head to rest on a bosom that is not dead. The lady sprang with a strange ghost cry, and she flung her white ghost arms on high, and she laughed a laugh that was not gay, and it lengthened out till it died away. And the dead beneath turned and moaned, and the yew trees above they shuddered and groaned. Will he love me twice with the love that is vain? Will he kill the poor ghost yet again? I thought thou wert good, but I said and wept. Can I have dreamed who have not slept? And I knew alas, or ever I would, whether I dreamed or thou wert good. When my baby died, my brain grew wild, I awoke, and found I was with my child. If thou art the ghost of my Adelaide, how is it? Thou wert but a village maid, and thou seamest an angel lady-white, thou thin and wan, and past delight. The lady smiled a flickering smile, and she pressed her temples hard the while. Thou seest that death for a woman can do more than a knighthood for a man. But show me the child thou callest mine, is she out to-night in the ghost's sunshine? In St. Peter's church she is playing on at hide-and-seek with Apostle John. When the boom beams right through the window go, where the twelve are standing in glorious show, she says the rest of them do not stir, but one comes down to play with her. Then I can go where I list and weep, for good St. John my child will keep. Thy beauty filleth the very air, never saw I a woman so fair. Come, if thou darest, and sit by my side, but do not touch me, or woe will be tied. Alas, I am weak, I might well know this gladness betoken some further woe. Yet come, it will come, I will bear it, I can, for thou lovest me yet, though but as a man. The knight dismounted in earnest speed, away through the tombstones thundered the steed, and fell by the outer wall, and died. But the knight he kneeled by the lady's side. Kneeled beside her in wondrous bliss, wrapped in an everlasting kiss. Though never his lips come thy lady nigh, and his eyes alone on her beauty lie. All night long till the cock crewed loud, he kneeled by the lady, lapped in her shroud. And what they said, I may not say, dead night was sweeter than living day. How she made him so blissful glad, who made her and found her so ghostly sad, I may not tell, but it needs no touch to make them blessed who love so much. Come every night, my ghost, to me, and one night I will come to thee. Tis good to have a ghostly wife. She will not tremble at claying of strife. She will only hearken amid the din behind the door if he cometh in. And this is how Sir Aglaveil often walked in the moonlight pale. And oft when the crescent but thinned the gloom, full-orbed moonlight filled his room, and through beneath his chamber-door fell a ghostly gleam on the outer floor, and they that passed and fear averred, that murmured words they often heard, twas then that the eastern crescent shone through the chancel window, and good St. John played with the ghost-child all the night, and the mother was free till the morning light, and sped through the dawning night to stay with Aglaveil till the break of day. And their love was a rapture, lone and high, and dumb as the moon in the topmost sky. One night Sir Aglaveil, weary, slept, and dreamed a dream wherein he wept. A warrior he was, not often wept he, but this night he wept full bitterly. He woke beside him the ghost-girl shone out of the dark, t'was the eve of St. John. He had dreamed a dream of a still dark wood, where the maiden of old beside him stood. But a mist came down and caught her away, and he sought her in vain through the pathless day. Till he wept with the grief that can do no more, and thought he had dreamt the dream before. From bursting heart the weeping flowed on, and low beside him the ghost-girl shone. Shone like the light on a harbour's breast, over the sea of his dreams unrest. Shone like the wondrous nameless boon that the heart seeks ever night or noon. Warnings forgotten when needed most, he clasped to his bosom the radiant ghost. She wailed aloud and faded and sank, with upturned white face, cold and blank. In his arms lay the corpse of the maiden pale, and she came no more to Sir Aglavale. Only a voice, when winds were wild, sobbed and wailed like a chidden child. Sobbed and wailed like a chidden child. Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, and there follows a mist, and a weeping rain, and life is never the same again. This was one of the simplest of her songs, which perhaps is the cause of my being able to remember it better than most of the others. While she sung, I was in Elysium, with a sense of a rich soul upholding, embracing, and overhanging mine, full of all plenty and bounty. I felt as if she could give me everything I wanted, as if I should never wish to leave her, but would be content to be sung to and fed by her day after day, as years rolled by. At last I fell asleep while she sang. When I awoke, I knew not whether it was night or day. The fire had sunk to a few red embers, which just gave light enough to show me the woman standing a few feet from me, with her back towards me, facing the door by which I had entered. She was weeping, but very gently, and plentifully. The tears seemed to come freely from her heart. Thus she stood for a few minutes. Then, slowly turning at right angles to her former position, she faced another of the four sides of the cottage. I now observed, for the first time, that here was a door likewise, and that, indeed, there was one in the center of every side of the cottage. When she looked towards the second door, her tears ceased to flow, but sighs took their place. She often closed her eyes as she stood, and every time she closed her eyes a gentle sigh seemed to be born in her heart, and to escape at her lips. But when her eyes were open, her sighs were deep and very sad, and shook her whole frame. Then she turned towards the third door, and a cry as of fear or suppressed pain broke from her. But she seemed to hearten herself against the dismay, and to front it steadily, for although I often heard a slight cry, and sometimes a moan, yet she never moved or bent her head, and I felt sure that her eyes never closed. Then she turned to the fourth door, and I saw her shudder, and then stand still as a statue, till at last she turned towards me and approached the fire. I saw that her face was white as death. But she gave one look upwards, and smiled the sweetest, most child-innocent smile, then heaped fresh wood on the fire, and sitting down by the blaze drew her wheel near her, and began to spin. While she spun, she murmured a low, strange song, to which the hum of the wheel made a kind of infinite symphony. At length she paused in her spinning and singing, and glanced toward me, like a mother who looks whether or not her child gives signs of waking. She smiled when she saw that my eyes were open. I asked her whether it was day yet. She answered, It is always day here, so long as I keep my fire burning. I felt wonderfully refreshed, and a great desire to see more of the island to walk within me. I rose, and saying that I wished to look about me, went towards the door by which I had entered. Stay a moment, said my hostess with some trepidation in her voice. Listen to me. You will not see what you expect when you go out of that door. Only remember this. Whenever you wish to come back to me, enter wherever you see this mark. She held up her left hand between me and the fire. Upon the palm, which appeared almost transparent, I saw in dark red a mark like this, an arrow, which I took care to fix in my mind. She then kissed me and bade me good-bye with a solemnity that awed me, and bewildered me too, seeing I was only going out for a little ramble in an island, which I did not believe larger than could easily be compassed in a few hours' walk at most. As I went she resumed her spinning. I opened the door and stepped out. The moment my foot touched the smooth sword I seemed to issue from the door of an old barn on my father's estate, where in the hot afternoons I used to go and lie amongst the straw and reed. It seemed to me now that I had been asleep there. At a little distance in the field I saw two of my brothers at play. The moment they caught sight of me they called out to me to come and join them, which I did, and we played together as we had done years ago, till the red sun went down in the west and the gray fog began to rise from the river. Then we went home together with a strange happiness. As we went we heard the continually renewed lorum of a land rail in the long grass. One of my brothers and I separated to a little distance and each commenced running towards the part whence the sound appeared to come, in the hope of approaching the spot where the bird was, and so getting at least a sight of it, if we should not be able to capture the little creature. My father's voice recalled us from trampling down the rich long grass soon to be cut down and laid aside for the winter. I had quite forgotten all about fairyland and the wonderful old woman and the curious red mark. My favourite brother and I shared the same bed. Some childish dispute arose between us and our last words ere we fell asleep were not of kindness, notwithstanding the pleasures of the day. When I awoke in the morning I missed him. He had risen early and had gone to bathe in the river. In another hour he was brought home drowned. Alas! Alas! if we had only gone to sleep as usual, the one with his arm about the other. Amidst the horror of the moment a strange conviction flashed across my mind that I had gone through the very same once before. I rushed out of the house, I knew not why, sobbing and crying bitterly. I ran through the fields in aimless distress till, passing the old barn, I caught sight of a red mark on the door. The mirest trifles sometimes rivet the attention in the deepest misery. The intellect has so little to do with grief. I went up to look at this mark which I did not remember ever to have seen before. As I looked at it I thought I would go in and lie down amongst the straw for I was very weary with running about and weeping. I opened the door and there in the cottage sat the old woman as I had left her at her spinning wheel. I did not expect you quite so soon, she said, as I shut the door behind me. I went up to the couch and threw myself on it with that fatigue wherewith one awakes from a feverish dream of hopeless grief. The old woman sang. The great sun benighted may faint from the sky, but love, once uplighted, will never more die. Form with its brightness, from eyes will depart. It walketh in whiteness the halls of the heart. Air she had ceased singing, my courage had returned. I started from the couch and, without taking leave of the old woman, opened the door of sighs and spring into which it appear. I stood in the lordly hall where, by a blazing fire on the hearth, sat a lady, waiting, I knew, for someone long desired. A mirror was near me, but I saw that my form had no place within its depths, so I feared not that I should be seen. The lady wonderfully resembled my marble lady, but was altogether of the daughters of men and I could not tell whether or not it was she. It was not for me, she waited. The tramp of a great horse rang through the court without. It ceased, and the claying of armor told that his rider alighted and the sound of his ringing heels approached the hall. The door opened, but the lady waited, for she would meet her lord alone. He strode in, she flew like a homebound dove into his arms and nestled on the hard steel. It was the night of the soiled armor, but now the armor shone like polished glass, and strange to tell, though the mirror reflected not my form. I saw a dim shadow of myself in the shining steel. Oh, my beloved, thou art come, and I am blessed. Her soft fingers speedily overcame the hard clasp of his helmet. One by one she undid the buckles of his armor, and she toiled under the weight of the mail as she would carry it aside. Then she unclasped his greaves and unbuckled his spurs, and once more she sprang into his arms and laid her head where she could now feel the beating of his heart. Then she disengaged herself from his embrace, and moving back a step or two, gazed at him. He stood there, a mighty form, crowned with a noble head, where all sadness had disappeared or had been absorbed in solemn purpose. Yet I suppose that he looked more thoughtful than the lady had expected to see him, for she did not renew her caresses, although his face glowed with love, and the few words he spoke were as mighty deeds for strength. But she led him towards the hearth, and seated him in an ancient chair, and set wine before him and sat at his feet. I am sad, he said, when I think of the youth whom I met twice in the forests of Fairyland, and who, you say, twice, with his songs, roused you from the death-sleep of an evil enchantment. There was something noble in him, but it was a nobleness of thought, and not of deed. He may yet perish of vile fear. Ah! returned the lady. You saved him once, and for that I thank you, for may I not say that I somewhat loved him. But tell me how you fared when you struck your battle-axe into the ashtray, and he came and found you. For so much of the story you had told me when the beggar-child came and took you away. As soon as I saw him rejoin the night I knew that earthly arms availed not against such as he, and that my soul must meet him in its naked strength. So I enclast my helm, and flung it on the ground, and holding my good axe yet in my hand, gazed at him with steady eyes. On he came a horror indeed, but I did not flinch. Endurance must conquer where force could not reach. He came nearer and nearer till the ghastly face was close to mine. A shudder as of death ran through me, but I think I did not move, for he seemed to quail and retreated. As soon as he gave back I struck one more sturdy blow on the stem of his tree that the forest rang, and then looked at him again. He writhed and grinned with rage and apparent pain, and again approached me, but retreated sooner than before. I heeded him no more, but hewed with a will at the tree till the trunk creaked and the head bowed, and with a crash it fell to the earth. Then I looked up from my labor, and lo! the specter had vanished, and I saw him no more. Nor ever in my wanderings have I heard of him again. Well struck, well withstood, my hero, said the lady. But, said the knight, somewhat troubled, does thou love the youth still? Ah! she replied, how can I help it? He woke me from worse than death. He loved me. I had never been for thee if he had not sought me first. But I love him not as I love thee. He was but the moon of my night. Thou art the son of my clay, O beloved. Thou art right to return the noble man. It were hard indeed not to have some love in return for such a gift as he hath given thee. I too owe him more than words can speak. Humbled before then with an aching and desolate heart I yet could not restrain my words. Let me then be the moon of thy night still, O woman, and when thy day is beclouded, as the fairest days will be, let some song of mine comfort thee as an old withered half-forgotten thing that belongs to an ancient mournful hour of uncompleted birth which yet was beautiful in its time. They sat silent, and I almost thought they were listening. The color of the lady's eyes grew deeper and deeper, the slow tears grew and filled them and overflowed. They rose and passed hand in hand, close to where I stood, and each looked toward me in passing. Then they disappeared through a door which closed behind them. But, Eric closed, I saw that the maroon into which it opened was a rich chamber hung with gorgeous arrays. I stood with an ocean of sighs frozen in my bosom. I could remain no longer. She was near me, and I could not see her, near me in the arms of one loved better than I, and I would not see her, and I would not be by her. But how to escape from the nearness of the best beloved? I had not this time forgotten the mark, for the fact that I could not enter the sphere of these living beings kept me aware that, for me, I moved in a vision while they moved in life. I looked all about for the mark but could see it nowhere, for I avoided looking just where it was. There the dull red cipher glowed on the very door of their secret chamber. Struck with agony I dashed it open and fell at the feet of the ancient woman, who still spun on, the whole dissolved ocean of my sighs bursting for me, in a storm of tearless sobs. Either I fainted or slept, I do not know. But as I returned to consciousness before I seemed to have power to move, I heard the woman singing, and could distinguish the words. O light of dead and of dying days! O love and thy glory go in a rosy mist and a moony maze, or the pathless peaks of snow! But what is left for the cold-gray soul that moans like a wounded dove? One wine is left in the broken bowl, tis to love and love and love. Now I could weep. When she saw me weeping she sang. Better to sit at the water's berth than a sea of waves to win, to live in the love that floweth forth than the love that cometh in. Be thy heart a well of love, my child. Flowing be thy heart a well of love, my child, flowing and free and sure. For a cistern of love, though undefiled, keeps not thy spirit pure. I rose from the earth, loving the white ladies I had never loved her before. Then I walked up to the door of dismay and opened it and went out, and lo I came forth upon a crowded street where men and women went to and fro in multitudes. I knew it well, and turning to one hand walked sadly along the pavement. Suddenly I saw approaching me a little way off a form well known to me. Well known alas how weak the word in the years when I thought my boyhood was left behind and shortly before I entered the realm of fairyland. Wrong and sorrow had gone together, hand and hand as it is well they do. Unchagably dear was that face. It lay in my heart as a child lies in its own white bed, but I could not meet her. Anything but that, I said, and turning aside, spraying up the steps to a door, on which I fancied I saw the mystic sign. I entered, not the mysterious cottage, but her home. I rushed wildly on and stood by the door of her room. She is out, I said. I will see the old room once more. I opened the door gently and stood in a great solemn church, a deep toned bell who sounds throbbed and echoed and swam through the empty building struck the hour of midnight. The moon show through the windows of the clear story, and enough of the ghostly radiance was diffused through the church to let me see, walking with a stately yet somewhat trailing and stumbling step down the opposite aisle, for I stood in one of the transeps. A figure dressed in a white robe, whether for the night or for that longer night which lies too deep for the day, I could not tell. Was it she, and was this her chamber? I crossed the church and followed. The figure stopped, seemed to ascend as it were a high bed and lay down. I reached the place where it lay, glimmering white. The bed was a tomb. The light was too ghostly to see clearly, but I passed my hand over the face and the hands and the feet, which were all bare. They were cold, they were marble, but I knew them. It grew dark. I turned to retrace my steps but found ere long that I had wandered into what seemed a little chapel. I groped about, seeking the door. Everything I touched belonged to the dead. My hands fell on the cold effigy of a knight, who lay with his legs crossed and his sword broken beside him. He lay in his noble rest, and I lived on in ignoble strife. I felt for the left hand and a certain finger I found there the ring I knew. He was one of my own ancestors. I was in the chapel over the burial vault of my race. I called aloud, if any of the dead are moving here let them take pity upon me, for I, alas, am still alive, and let some dead woman comfort me, for I am a stranger in the land of the dead and see no light. A warm kiss alighted on my lips through the dark, and I said, The dead kiss well. I will not be afraid. And a great hand was reached out of the dark and grasped mine for a moment, mightily and tenderly. I said to myself, The veil between, though very dark, is very thin. Groping my way further I stumbled over the heavy stone that covered the entrance of the vault, and, in stumbling, described upon the stone the mark glowing in red fire. I caught the great ring. All my effort could not have moved the huge slab, but it opened the door of the cottage, and I threw myself once more, pale and speechless on the couch beside the ancient dame. She sang once more. Thou dreamest on a rock thou art high or the broken wave. Thou fallest with a fearful start, but not into thy grave. For, waking in the morning's light, thou smileest at the vanished night, so wilt thou sink, all pale and dumb, into the fainting gloom. But ere the coming terrors come, thou wakest, where is the tomb? Thou wakest, the dead one's smile above, with hovering arms of sleepless love. She paused, then saying again. We weep for gladness, weep for grief, the tears they are the same. We sigh for longing and relief, the sighs have but one name. And mingled in the dying strife are moans that are not sad, the pangs of death are throbs of life, its sighs are sometimes glad. The face is very strange and white, it is earth's only spot that feebly flickers back the light, the living, seeeth not. I fell asleep and slept the dreamless sleep, for I know not how long. When I awoke I found that my hostess had moved from where she had been sitting and now sat between me and the fourth door. I guessed that her design was to prevent my entering there. I sprang from the couch and darted past her to the door. I opened it at once and went out. All I remember is a cry of distress from the woman. Don't go there, my child, don't go there! But I was gone. I knew nothing more, or if I did I had forgot it all when I awoke to consciousness lying on the floor of the cottage with my head in the lap of the woman who was weeping over me and stroking my hair with both hands, talking to me as a mother might talk to a sick and sleeping or a dead child. As soon as I looked up and saw her she smiled through her tears, smiled with withered face and young eyes till her countenance was irradiated with the light of the smile. Then she bathed my head and face and hands in an icy, cold, colorless liquid which smelled a little of damp earth. Immediately I was able to sit up. She rose and put some food before me. When I had eaten she said, Listen to me, my child, you must leave me directly. Leave you, I said. I am so happy with you. I never was so happy in my life. But you must go, she rejoined sadly. Listen, what do you hear? I hear the sound as if a great throbbing of water. Ah, you do hear it? Well, I had to go through that door, the door of the timeless, and she shuddered as she pointed to the fourth door, to find you, for if I had not gone you would never have entered again, and because I went the waters around my cottage will rise and rise and flow and come till they build a great firmament of waters over my dwelling. But as long as I keep my fire burning, they cannot enter. I have fuel enough for years, and after one year they will sink away again and be just as they were before you came. I have not been buried for a hundred years now. And she smiled and wept. Alas! Alas! I cried. I have brought this evil and the best and kindest of friends who has filled my heart with great gifts. Do not think of that, she rejoined. I can bear it very well. You will come back to me some day, I know. But I beg you for my sake, my dear child, to do one thing. In whatever sorrow you may be, however inconsolable and irremediable it may appear, believe me that the old woman in the cottage, with the young eyes, and she smiled, knows something, though she must not always tell it, that should quite satisfy you about it, even in the worst moments of your distress. Now you must go. But how can I go if the waters are all about, and if the doors all lead into other regions and other worlds? This is not an island, she replied, but is joined to the land by a narrow neck, and for the door I will lead you myself through the right one. She took my hand and led me through the third door, whereupon I found myself standing in this deep grassy turf on which I had landed from the little boat, but upon the opposite side of the cottage she pointed out the direction I mistake, to find the isthmus and escape the rising waters. Then putting her arms around me she held me to her bosom, and as I kissed her I felt as if I were leaving my mother for the first time and could not help weeping bitterly. At length she gently pushed me away, and with the words, go, my son, and do something worth doing, turned back, and entering the cottage closed the door behind her. I felt very desolate as I went. CHAPTER XXV. Thou hadst no fame, that which thou didst like good, was but thy appetite that swayed thy blood, for that time to the best, for as a blast that through a house comes usually doth cast things out of order, yet by chance may come and blow some one thing to his proper room, so did thy appetite and not thy zeal sway thee by chance to do some one thing well. Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess. The noble heart that harbors virtuous thought, and is with child of glorious great intent, can never rest until it forth have brought the eternal brood of glory excellent. SPENCER THE FAIRY QUEEN. I had not gone very far before I felt that the turf beneath my feet was soaked with the rising waters. But I reached the Esmys in safety. It was rocky and so much higher than the level of the peninsula that I had plenty of time to cross. I saw, on each side of me, the water rising rapidly, all together without wind, or violent motion, or broken waves, but as if a slow strong fire were glowing beneath it. Ascending a steep aclivity, I found myself at last in an open, rocky country. After travelling for some hours, as nearly in a straight line as I could, I arrived at a lonely tower, built on the top of a little hill, which overlooked the whole neighbouring country. As I approached, I heard the claying of an anvil, and so rapid were the blows that I despaired of making myself heard till a pause in the work should ensue. It was some minutes before cessation took place, but when it did, I knocked loudly, and had not long to wait. For a moment after, the door was partly opened by a noble-looking youth, half undressed, glowing with heat, and begrimed with the blackness of the forge. In one hand he held a sword, so lately from the furnace that it yet shone with a dull fire. As soon as he saw me, he threw the door wide open, and standing aside invited me very cordially to enter. I did so. When he shut and bolted the door most carefully, and then led the way inwards. He brought me into a rude hall which seemed to occupy almost the whole of the ground floor of the little tower, in which I saw was now being used as a workshop. A huge fire roared on the hearth beside which was an anvil. By the anvil stood in similar undress, and in a waiting attitude, hammer in hand, a second youth, tall as the former, but far more slightly built. Reversing the usual course of perception in such meetings, I thought them at first sight very unlike, and at the second glance knew that they were brothers. The former, and apparently the elder, was muscular and dark, with curling hair and large hazel eyes which sometimes grew wondrously soft. The second was slender and fair, yet with accountants like an eagle and an eye which, though pale blue, shone with an almost fierce expression. He stood erect, as if looking from a lofty mountain crag over a vast plain outstretched below. As soon as we entered the hall, the elder turned to me, and I saw that a glow of satisfaction shone on both their faces. To my surprise, and great pleasure, he addressed me thus. Brother, will you sit by the fire and rest till we finish this part of our work? I signified my ascent, and resolved to await any disclosure they might be inclined to make, seated myself in silence near the hearth. The elder brother then laid the sword in the fire, covered it well over, and when it had attained a sufficient degree of heat, drew it out and laid it on the anvil, moving it carefully about, while the younger, with a succession of quick smart blows, appeared either to be welding it, or hammering one part of it to a consenting shape with the rest. Having finished, they laid it carefully in the fire, and when it was very hot indeed, plunged it into a vessel full of some liquid, once a blue flame sprang upwards as the glowing steel entered. There they left it, and drawing two stools to the fire sat down, one on each side of me. We are very glad to see you, brother. We have been expecting you for some days, said the dark-haired youth. I am proud to be called your brother, I rejoined, and you will not think I refuse the name if I desire to know why you honor me with it? Ah! then he does not know about it, said the younger. We thought you had known of the bond betwixt us in the work we have to do together. You must tell him, brother, from the first. So the elder began. Our father is the king of this country. Before we were born three giant brothers had appeared in the land. No one knew exactly when, and no one had the least idea once they came. They took possession of a ruined castle that had stood unchanged and unoccupied within the memory of any of the country people. The vaults of this castle had remained uninjured by time, and these, I presume, they made use of at first. They were rarely seen and never offered the least injury to any one, so that they were regarded in the neighborhood as at least perfectly harmless, if not rather benevolent beings. But it began to be observed that the old castle had assumed somehow or other, no one knew when or how, a somewhat different look from what it had used to have. Not only were several breaches in the lower part of the walls built up, but actually some of the battlements which yet stood had been repaired, apparently to prevent them from falling into worse decay, while the more important parts were being restored. Of course everyone supposed the giants must have a hand in the work, but no one ever saw them engaged in it. The peasants became yet more uneasy after one who had concealed himself and watched all night in the neighborhood of the castle reported that he had seen in full moonlight the three huge giants working with might and main all night long, restoring to their former position some massive stones, formerly steps of a grand turnpike stair, a great portion of which had long since fallen, along with part of the wall of the round tower in which it had been built. This wall they were completing foot by foot, along with the stair. But the people said they had no just pretext for interfering, although the real reason for letting the giants alone was that everyone was far too much afraid of them to interrupt them. At length, with the help of a neighboring quarry, the whole of the external wall of the castle was finished, and now the country folks were in greater fear than before, but for several years the giants remained very peaceful. The reason of this was afterwards supposed to be the fact that they were distantly related to several good people in the country, for as long as these lived they remained quiet, but as soon as they were all dead the real nature of the giants broke out. Having completed the outside of their castle they proceeded by spoiling the country houses around them to make a quiet, luxurious provision for their comfort within. Affairs reached such a pass that the news of their robberies came to my father's ears, but he, alas, was so crippled in his resources by a war he was carrying on with a neighboring prince that he could only spare a very few men to attempt the capture of their stronghold. Upon these the giants issued in the night and slew every man of them. And now, grown bolder by success and impunity, they no longer confined their depredations to property but began to seize the persons of their distinguished neighbors, knights and ladies and hold them endurance, the misery of which was heightened by all manner of indignity until they were redeemed by their friends at an exorbitant ransom. Many knights have adventured their overthrow, but to their own instead, for they have all been slain or captured or forced to make a hasty retreat. To crown their enormities, if any man now attempts their destruction, they, immediately upon his defeat, put one or more of their captives to a shameful death, on a turret inside of all passers-by, so that they have been much less molested of late. And we, although we have burned for years to attack these demons and destroy them, dared not, for the sake of their captives, risk the adventure, before we should have reached at least our earliest manhood. Now, however, we are preparing for the attempt, and the grounds of this preparation are these. Having only the resolution and not the experience necessary for the undertaking, we went and consulted a lonely woman of wisdom who lives not very far from here, in the direction of the quarter from which you have come. She received us most kindly, and gave us what seems to us the best of advice. She first inquired what experience we had had in arms. We told her we had been well exercised from our boyhood, and for some years had kept ourselves in constant practice, with a view to this necessity. But you have not actually fought for life and death, said she. We were forced to confess we had not. So much the better, in some respects, she replied. Now listen to me. Go first, and work with an armorer, for as long time as you find needful to obtain a knowledge of his craft, which will not be long seeing your hearts will be all in the work. Then go to some lonely tower, you two alone. Receive no visits from man or woman. There forage for yourselves every piece of armor that you wish to wear, or to use in your coming encounter, and keep up your exercises. As however two of you can be no match for the three giants, I will find you, if I can, a third brother, who will take on himself the third share of the fight, and the preparation. Indeed, I have already seen one who will, I think, be the very man for your fellowship, but it will be some time before he comes to me. He is wandering now without an aim. I will show him to you in a glass, and when he comes you will know him at once. If you will share your endeavours you must teach him all you know, and he will repair you well in present song and in future deeds. She opened the door of a curious old cabinet that stood in the room. On the inside of this door was an oval, convex mirror. Looking in it for some time we at length saw reflected the place where we stood, and the old dame seated in her chair. Our forms were not reflected, but at the feet of the dame lay a young man, yourself, weeping. Surely this youth will not serve our ends, said I, for he weeps. The old woman smiled. Past tears our presence strength, said she. Oh! said my brother. I saw you weep once over an eagle you shot. That was because it was so like you, brother, I replied. But indeed this youth may have better cause for tears than that. I was wrong. Wait a while, said the woman. If I mistake not he will make you weep till your tears are dry for ever. Tears are the only cure for weeping, and you may have need of the cure before you go forth to fight the giants. You must wait for him in your tower till he comes. Now, if you will join us we will soon teach you to make your armor and we will fight together and work together and love each other as never three loved before, and you will sing to us, will you not? That I will when I can, I answered. But it is only at times that the power of song comes upon me. For that I must wait. But I have a feeling that if I work well song will not be far off to enliven the labour. This was all the compact made. The brothers required nothing more and I did not think of giving anything more. I rose and threw off my upper garments. I know the uses of the sword, I said. I am ashamed of my white hands besides yours so nobly soiled and hard, but that shame will soon be wiped away. No, no, we will not work today. Rest is as needful as toil. Bring the wine, brother, it is your turn to serve today. The younger brother soon covered a table with rough vines, but good wine, and we ate and drank heartily beside our work. Before the meal was over I had learned all their story. Each had something in his heart which made the conviction that he would victoriously perish in the coming conflict a real sorrow to him. Otherwise they thought they would have lived enough. The causes of their trouble were respectfully these. While they wrought with an armourer in a city famed for workmanship and steel and silver, the elder had fallen in love with the lady as far beneath him in real rank as she was above the station he had as a printance to an armourer. Nor did he seek to further his suit by discovering himself. But there was simply so much manhood about him that no one ever thought of rank when in his company. This is what his brother said about it. The lady could not help loving him in return. He told her, when he left her, that he had a perilous adventure before him and that when it was achieved she would either see him return to claim her or hear that he had died with honour. The younger brother's grief arose from the fact that if they were both slain his old father the king would be childless. His love for his father was so exceeding that to one unable to sympathise with it it would have appeared extravagant. Both loved him equally at heart, but the love of the younger had been more developed, because his thoughts and anxieties had not been otherwise occupied. When at home he had been his constant companion, and of late had ministered to the infirmities of his growing age. The youth was never weary of listening to the tales of his sire's youthful adventures, and had not yet in the smallest degree lost the conviction that his father was the greatest man in the world. The grandest triumph possible to his conception was to return to his father laden with the spoils of one of the hated giants. But they both were in some dread lest the thought of the loneliness of these two might occur to them in the moment when the decision was most necessary and disturb in some degree the self-possession requisite for the success of their attempt. For as I have said they were yet untried in actual conflict. Now thought I, I see to what the powers of my gift must minister. For my own part I did not dread death, for I had nothing to care to live for. But I dreaded the encounter because of the responsibility connected with it. I resolved, however, to work hard and thus grow cool and quick and forceful. The time passed away in work and song, in talk and ramble, in friendly fight and brotherly aid. I would not forge for myself armor of heavy mail like theirs, for I was not so powerful as they, and depended more for any success I might secure upon nimbleness of motion, certainty of I, and steady response of hand. Before I began to make for myself a shirt of steel plates and rings, which work, while more troublesome, was better suited to me than the heavier labor. Much assistance did the brothers give me, even after, by their instructions I was able to make some progress alone. Their work was in a moment abandoned to render any required aid to mine. As the old woman had promised I tried to repay them with song, and many were the tears they both shed over my ballads and dirges. The songs they liked best to hear were too which I made for them. They were not half so good as many others I knew, especially some I had learned from the wise woman in the cottage, but what come nearest to our needs we like the best. The king sat on his throne, glowing in gold and red. The crown in his right hand shone, and the gray hair his crowned his head. His only son walks in, and in walls of steel he stands. Take me, O Father, strong to win, with the blessing of holy hands. He knelt before his sire, who blessed him with feeble smile. His eyes shone out with a kingly fire, but his old lips quivered the while. Go to the fight, my son, bring back the giant's head, and the crown with which my brows have done shall glitter on thine instead. My father, I seek no crowns, but unspoken praise from thee. For thy people's good and thy renown I will die to set them free. The king sat down and waited there, and rose not, night or day, till the sound of shouting filled the air in cries of a sore dismay. Then like a king he sat once more with the crown upon his head, and up to the throne the people bore a mighty giant dead. And up to the throne the people bore a pale and lifeless boy. The king rose up like a prophet of yore in a lofty death-like joy. He put the crown on the chilly brow. Thou shouldest have reigned with me, but death is the king of both, and now I go to obey with thee. Surely some good in me there lay to beget the noble one. The old man smiled like a winter day, and fell beside his son. O lady, thy lover is dead, they cried. He is dead, but hath slain the foe. He hath left his name to be magnified in a song of wonder and woe. Alas, I am well repaid, said she, with a pain that stings like joy, for I feared from this tenderness to me, that he was but a feeble boy. Now I shall hold my head on high, the queen among my kind, if ye hear a sound, it is only a sigh, for a glory left behind. The first three times I sang these songs they both wept passionately, but after the third time they wept no more. Their eyes shone, and their faces grew pale, but they never wept at any of my songs again. CHAPTER XXI I put my life in my hands. The Book of Judges. At length, with much toil and equal delight, our armour was finished. We armed each other, and tested the strength of the defence with many blows of loving force. I was inferior in strength to both my brothers, but a little more agile than either. And upon this agility, joined to precision in hitting with the point of my weapon, I grounded my hopes of success in the ensuing combat. I likewise laboured to develop yet more the keenness of sight, with which I was naturally gifted, and from the remarks of my companions I soon learned that my endeavours were not in vain. The morning arrived on which we had determined to make the attempt, and succeed or perish, perhaps both. We had resolved to fight on foot, knowing that the mishap of many of the knights who had made the attempt had resulted from the fright of their horses at the appearance of the giants. And believing with Sir Gawain that, though Mare's sons might be false to us, the earth would never prove a traitor. But most of our preparations were, in their immediate aim at least, frustrated. We rose that fatal morning by daybreak. We had rested from all labour the day before, and now were fresh as the lark. We bathed in cold spring water, and dressed ourselves in clean garments, with a sense of preparation as for a solemn festivity. When we had broken our fast I took an old lyre, which I had found in the tower, and had myself repaired, and sung for the last time the two ballads of which I have said so much already. I followed them with this, for a closing song. Oh, well for him, who breaks his dream with the blow that ends the strife, and waking knows the peace that flows around the pain of life. We are dead, my brothers, our bodies clasp, as an armour our souls about. This hand is the battle-axe I grasp, and this my hammer stout. Fear not, my brothers, for we are dead. No noise can break our rest. The calm of the grave is about the head, and the heart heaves not the breast. And our life we throw to our people back, to live with a further store. We leave at them that there be no lack in the land where we live no more. Oh, well for him, who breaks his dream with the blow that ends the strife, and waking knows the peace that flows around the noise of life. As the last few tones of the instrument were following, like a dirge, the death of the song, we all sprang to our feet. For through one of the little windows of the tower, towards which I had looked as I sang, I saw a suddenly rising over the edge of the slope on which our tower stood, three enormous heads. The brothers knew at once, by my looks, what caused my sudden movement. We were utterly unarmed, and there was no time to arm. But we seemed to adopt the same resolution simultaneously. Each caught up his favorite weapon, and leaving his defense behind, spraying to the door. I snatched up a long rapier, abruptly, but very finely pointed in my sword-hand, and in the other, a sabre. The elder brother seized his heavy battle-axe, and the younger, a great two-handed sword, which he wielded in one hand like a feather. We had just time to get clear of the tower, embrace and say good-bye and part to some little distance that we might not encumber each other's motions ere the triple-giant brotherhood drew near to attack us. They were about twice our height, and armed to the teeth, through the visors of their helmets their monstrous eyes shown with the horrible ferocity. I was in the middle position, and the middle giant approached me. My eyes were busy with his armor, and I was not a moment in settling my mode of attack. I saw that his body armor was somewhat clumsily made, and that the overlappings in the lower part had more play than necessary, and I hoped that, in a fortunate moment, some joint would open a little in a visible and accessible part. I stood till he came near enough to aim below at me with the mace, which has been, in all ages, the favourite weapon of giants, when, of course, I leaped aside and let the blow fall upon the spot where I had been standing. I expected this would strain the joints of his armor yet more. Full of fury he made at me again, but I kept him busy constantly eluding his blows and hoping thus to fatigue him. He did not seem to fear any assault from me, and I attempted none as yet. But while I watched his motions in order to avoid his blows, I, at the same time, kept equal watch upon those joints of his armor through some one of which I hoped to reach his life. At length, as if somewhat fatigued, he paused a moment and drew himself slightly up. I bounded forward foot and hand, ran my rapier right through to the armor of his back, let go the hilt, and passing under his right arm, turned as he fell and flew at him with my sabre. At one happy blow I divided the band of his helmet, which fell off, and allowed me with a second cut across the eyes to blind him quite, after which I clove his head, and turned, uninjured to see how my brothers had fared. Both the giants were down, but so were my brothers. I flew first to the one, and then to the other couple. Both pairs of combatants were dead, and yet locked together as in the death struggle. The elder had buried his battle-axe in the body of his foe, and had fallen beneath him as he fell. The giant had strangled him with his own death agonies. The younger had nearly hewn off the left leg of his enemy, and, grappled with in the act, had, while they rolled together on the earth, found for his dagger a passage betwixt the gorget and curass of the giant, and stabbed him mortally in the throat. The blood from the giant's throat was yet pouring over the hand of his foe, which still grasped the hilt of the dagger sheathed in the wound. They lay silent. I, the least worthy, remained the sole survivor in the lists. As I stood exhausted amidst the dead, after the first worthy deed of my life, I suddenly looked behind me, and there lay the shadow, black in the sunshine. I went into the lonely tower, and there lay the useless armor of the noble youths, supine as they. Ah, how sad it looked! It was a glorious death, but it was death. My songs could not comfort me now. I was almost ashamed that I was alive when they, the true-hearted, were no more. And yet I breathed freer to think that I had gone through the trial and had not failed, and perhaps I may be forgiven if some feelings of pride arose in my bosom when I looked down on the mighty form that lay dead by my hand. After all, however, I said to myself, and my heart sank. It was only skill. Your giant was but a blunderer. I left the bodies of the friends and foes peaceful enough when the death-fight was over, and hastening to the country below roused the peasants. They came with shouting and gladness, bringing wagons to carry the bodies. I resolved to take the prince's home to their father, each as he lay in the arms of his country's foe. But first I searched the giants, and found the keys of their castle, to which I repaired, followed by a great company of the people. It was a place of wonderful strength. I released the prisoners, knights, and ladies all in a sad condition from the cruelties and neglects of the giants. It humbled me to see them crowding round me with thanks, when in truth the glorious brothers, lying dead by their lonely tower, were those to whom the thanks belonged. I had but aided in carrying out the thought born in their brain, and uttered invisible form before ever I laid hold thereupon. Yet I did count myself happy to have been chosen for their brother in this great deed. After a few hours spent in refreshing and clothing the prisoners, we all commenced for our journey towards the capital. This was slow at first, but as the strength and spirits of the prisoners returned, it became more rapid, and in three days we reached the palace of the king. As we entered the city gates, with the huge bulks lying each on a wagon drawn by horses and two of them inextricably intertwined with the dead bodies of their princes, the people raised a shout and then a cry and followed in multitudes the solemn procession. I will not attempt to describe the behavior of the grand old king. Joy and pride in his sons overcame his sorrow at their loss. On me he heaped every kindness that heart could devise or hand execute. He used to sit and question me, night after night, about everything that was in any way connected with them and their preparations. Our mode of life and relation to each other, during the time we spent together, was a constant theme. He entered into the minutest details of the construction of the armour, even to a peculiar mode of riveting some of the plates, with unwearying interest. This armour I had intended to beg of the king as my soul memorials of the contest, but when I saw the delight he took in contemplating it, and the consolation it appeared to afford him in his sorrow, I could not ask for it. But at his request left my own, weapons and all, to be joined with theirs in a trophy erected in the grand square of the palace. The king, with gorgeous ceremony, dubbed to me night with his own old hand, in which trembled the sword of his youth. During the short time I remained, my company was, naturally, much courted by the young nobles. I was in a constant round of gaiety and diversion not withstanding that the court was in mourning. For the country was so rejoiced at the death of the giants, and so many of their lost friends had been restored to the nobility and men of wealth, that the gladness surpassed the grief. You have indeed left your lives to your people, my great brothers, I said. But I was ever and ever haunted by the old shadow, which I had not seen all the time that I was at work in the tower. Even in the society of the ladies of the court, who seemed to think at only their duty to make my stay there as pleasant to me as possible, I could not help being conscious of its presence. Although it might not be annoying me at the time. At length, somewhat weary of uninterrupted pleasure, and know why strengthened thereby, either in body or mind, I put on a splendid suit of armor of steel inlaid with silver, which the old king had given me, and mounting the horse on which it had been brought to me, took my leave of the palace, to visit the distant city in which the lady dwelt, whom the elder prince had loved. I anticipated a sore task, in conveying to her the news of his glorious fate, but this trial was spared me in a manner as strange as anything that had happened to me in Fairyland. CHAPTER XXII No one has my form but the eye. CHAPTER XXXII On the third day of my journey I was riding gently along a road, apparently little frequented, to judge from the grass that grew upon it. I was approaching a forest. Everywhere in Fairyland forests are the places where one may most certainly expect adventures. As I drew near, a youth unarmed, gentle, and beautiful who had just cut a branch from a U growing on the skirts of the wood evidently to make himself a bow, met me, and thus accosted me. Sir Knight, be careful as thou ridest through this forest, for it is said to be strangely enchanted, in a sort which even those who have been witnesses of its enchantment can hardly describe. I thanked him for his advice, which I promised to follow and rode on. But the moment I entered the wood it seemed to me that, if enchantment there was, it must be of a good kind, for the shadow which had been more than usually dark and distressing since I had set out on this journey, suddenly disappeared. I felt a wonderful elevation of spirits, and began to reflect on my past life, and especially on my combat with the giants, with such satisfaction that I had actually to remind myself that I had only killed one of them, and that, but for the brothers I should never have had the idea of attacking them, not to mention the smallest power of standing to it. Still, I rejoiced, and counted myself amongst the glorious nights of old, having even the unspeakable presumption, my shame and self-condemnation at the memory of it are such, that I write it as the only and soreest dependence I can perform. To think of myself, will the world ever believe it? as side by side with Sir Gala had. Usually had the thought been borne in my mind when, approaching me from the left, through the trees, I aspired a resplendent night of mighty size, whose armor seemed to shine of itself without the sun. When he drew near, I was astonished to see that his armor was like my own. Nay, I could trace, line for line, the correspondence of the inlaid silver to the device on my own. His horse, too, was like mine in color, form, and motion. Give that, like his rider, he was greater and fiercer than his counterpart. The night rode with beaver up. As he halted right opposite to me in the narrow path, barring my way, I saw the reflection of my countenance in the center plate of shining steel on his breastplate. Above it rose the same face, his face, only, as I have said, larger and fiercer. I was bewildered. I could not help feeling some admiration of him, but it was mingled with a dim conviction that he was evil and that I ought to fight with him. Let me pass, I said. When I will, he replied. Something within me said, Spear in rest, and ride at him, else thou art forever a slave. I tried, but my arm trembled so much that I could not couch my lance. To tell the truth, I, who had overcome the giant, shook like a coward before this night. He gave a scornful laugh that echoed through the wood, turned his horse, and said, without looking round, follow me. I obeyed, abashed, and stupefied. How long he led and how long I followed, I cannot tell. I never knew misery before, I said to myself. Wood that I had at least struck him and had had my death blow in return. Why then do I not call to him to wheel and defend himself? Alas! I know not why, but I cannot. One look from him would cow me like a beaten hound. I followed and was silent. At length we came to a dreary square in the middle of a dense forest. It looked as if scarce a tree had been cut down to make room for it. Across the very door, diagonally, grew the stem of a tree, so large, that there was just room to squeeze past it in order to enter. One miserable square hole in the roof was the only visible suggestion of a window. Turret, or battlement, or projecting masonry of any kind, it had none. Clear and smooth and massy, it rose from its base and ended with the line straight and unbroken. The roof, carried to a center from each of the four walls, rose slightly to the point where the rafters met. Round the base lay several little heaps of either bits of broken branches, withered and peeled, or half-whitened bones. I could not distinguish which. As I approached, the ground sounded hollow beneath my horse's hoofs. The knight took a great key from his pocket, and reaching past the stem of the tree, with some difficulty, opened the door. "'Dismount!' he commanded. I obeyed. He turned my horse's head away from the tower, gave him a terrible blow with the flat side of his sword and sent him madly tearing through the forest. "'Now,' said he, "'enter and take your companion with you.' I looked round. Knight and horse had vanished, and behind me lay the horrible shadow. I entered, for I could not help myself, and the shadow followed me. I had a terrible conviction that the knight and he were one. The door closed behind me. Now I was indeed in pitiful plight. There was literally nothing in the tower but my shadow and me. The walls rose right up to the roof, in which, as I had seen from without, there was one little square opening. This I now knew to be the only window the tower possessed. I sat down on the floor in listless wretchedness. I think I must have fallen asleep and have slept for hours, for I suddenly became aware of existence, in observing that the moon was shining through the hole in the roof. As she rose higher and higher, her light crept down to the wall over me, till at last it shone right upon my head. Instantaneously the walls of the tower seemed to vanish away like a mist. I sat beneath a beach, on the edge of a forest, and the open country lay, in the moonlight, for miles and miles around me, spotted with glimmering houses and spires and towers. I thought with myself, O joy, it was only a dream! The horrible narrow waste is gone, and I wake beneath a beach-tree, perhaps one that loves me and I can go where I will. I rose, as I thought, and walked about, and did what I would, but ever kept near the tree. For always, and, of course, since my meeting with the woman of the beach-tree far more than ever, I loved that tree. So the night wore on. I waited for the sun to rise, before I could venture to renew my journey. But as soon as the first faint light of the dawn appeared, instead of shining upon me from the eye of the morning, it stole like a fainting ghost through the little square hole above my head. And the walls came out as the light grew, and the glorious night was swallowed up of the hateful day. The long dreary day passed. My shadow lay black on the floor. I felt no hunger, no need of food. The night came. The moon shone. I watched her light slowly descending the wall, as I might have watched, a down-the-sky, the long, swift approach of a helping angel. Her rays touched me, and I was free. Thus night after night passed away. I should have died but for this. Every night the conviction returned that I was free. Every morning I sat wretchedly disconsolate. At length, when the course of the moon no longer permitted her beams to touch me, the night was dreary as the day. When I slept I was somewhat consoled by my dreams. But all the time I dreamed I knew that I was only dreaming. But one night, at length, the moon, a mere shred of pallor, scattered a few thin ghostly rays upon me, and I think I fell asleep and dreamed. I sat in an autumn night before the vintage, on a hill overlooking my own castle. My heart sprang with joy. Oh, to be a child again, innocent, fearless, without shame or desire! I walked down to the castle. All were in consternation in my absence. My sisters were weeping for my loss. They sprang up and clung to me with incoherent cries as I entered. My old friends came flocking round me. A gray light shone on the roof of the hall. It was the light of the dawn shining through the square window of my tower. More earnestly than ever I longed for freedom after this dream, more drearily than ever, crept on the next wretched day. I measured by the sunbeams caught through the little window in the trap of my tower, how it went by, waiting only for the dreams of the night. About noon I started as if something foreign to all my senses and all my experience had suddenly invaded me, yet it was only the voice of a woman singing. My whole frame quivered with joy, surprise, and the sensation of the unforeseen. Like a living soul, like an incarnation of nature, the song entered my prison-house. Each tone folded its wings and laid itself like a caressing bird upon my heart. It bathed me like a sea, enwrapped me like an odorous vapor, entered my soul like a long draft of clear spring water, shone upon me like a central sunlight, soothed me like a mother's voice in hand. Yet as the clearest forest well tastes sometimes of the bitterness of decayed leaves, so too my weary prisoned heart its cheerfulness had a sting of cold, and its tenderness unmanned me with the faintness of long-departed joys. I wept half bitterly, half luxuriously, but not long. I dashed away the tears, ashamed of a weakness which I thought I had abandoned. There I knew I had walked to the door and seated myself with my ears against it in order to catch every syllable of the revelation from the unseen outer world. And now I heard each word distinctly. The singer seemed to be standing or sitting near the tower, for the sounds indicated no change of place. The song was something like this. The sun, like a golden knot on high, gathers the glories of the day and binds them into a shining tent, roofing the world with affirmament. And through the pavilion the rich winds blow, and through the pavilion the waters go, and the birds for joy in the trees for prayer bowing their heads in the sunny air, and for thoughts the gently talking springs that come from the centre with secret things. All make a music, gentle and strong, bound by the heart into one sweet song. And amidst them all the mother earth sits with the children of her birth. She tendeth them all as a mother hen, her little ones round her, twelve or ten. Often she sitteth, with hands on knee, idle with love for her family. Go forth to her from the dark and the dust, and weep beside her, if weep thou must. If she may not hold thee to her breast, like a weary infant that cries for rest, at least she will press thee to her knee, and tell a low sweet tale to thee. Till the hue to thy cheeky, and the light to thine eye, strength to thy limbs, and courage high, to thy fainting heart, return amane, and a way to work thou ghost again. From the narrow desert, oh man of pride, come into the house, so high and wide. Really knowing what I did, I opened the door. Why had I not done so before? I do not know. At first I could see no one, but when I had forced myself past the tree which grew across the entrance, I saw, seated on the ground, and leaning against the tree, with her back to my prison, a beautiful woman. Her countenance seemed known to me, and yet unknown. She looked at me and smiled when I made my appearance. Ah, were you the prisoner there? I am very glad I have wild you out. Do you know me then? Do you not know me? But you hurt me, and that, I suppose, makes it easy for a man to forget. You broke my globe, yet I thank you. Perhaps I owe you many thanks for breaking it. I took the pieces, all black, and wet, with crying over them, to the fairy queen. There was no music, and no light in them now. But she took them from me, and laid them aside, and made me go to sleep in a great hall of white, with black pillars, and many red curtains. When I woken the morning, I went to her, hoping to have my globe again, whole and sound. But she sent me away without it, and I have not seen it since. Nor do I care for it now. I have something so much better. I do not need the globe to play to me, for I can sing. I could not sing at all before. Now I go about everywhere through fairyland, singing till my heart is like to break, just like my globe, for very joy at my own songs. And wherever I go, my songs do good, and deliver people. And now I have delivered you, and I am so happy. She ceased, and the tears came into her eyes. All this time I had been gazing at her, and now fully recognized the face of the child, glorified in the countenance of the woman. I was ashamed and humbled before her. But a great weight was lifted from my thoughts. I knelt before her, and thanked her, and begged her to forgive me. Rise, rise, she said. I have nothing to forgive. I thank you. But now I must be gone, for I do not know how many may be waiting for me here and there through the dark forests, and they cannot come out till I come. She rose, and with a smile and a farewell turned and left me. I dared not ask her to stay. In fact I could hardly speak to her. Between her and me there was a great gulf. She was uplifted, by sorrow and well-doing, into a region I could hardly hope ever to enter. I watched her departure as one watches the sunset. She went like a radiance through the dark wood, which was henceforth bright to me, from simply knowing that such a creature was in it. She was bearing the sun to the unsung spots. The light and the music of her broken globe were now in her heart and her brain. As she went she sang, and I caught these few words of her song, and the tones seemed to linger and wind about the trees after she had disappeared. Thou goest thine and I go mine. Many ways we wind, many days and many ways ending in one end. Many a wrong in its curing song. Many a road and many an inn, room to roam but only one home for all the world to win. And so she vanished. With a sad heart, soothed by humility and the knowledge of her peace and gladness, I bethought me what now I should do. First I must leave the tower far behind me, lest, in some evil moment, I might be once more caged within its horrible walls. But it was ill walking in my heavy armor, and besides I had now no right to the golden spurs in the resplendent mail, fitly doled with long neglect. I might do for a squire, but I honoured knighthood too highly to call myself any longer one of the noble brotherhood. I stripped off all my armor, piled it under the tree, just where the lady had been seated, and took my unknown way eastward through the woods. Of all my weapons I carried only a short axe in my hand. Then first I knew the delight of being lowly, of saying to myself, I am what I am, nothing more. I have failed, I said. I have lost myself. Would it had been my shadow? I looked round, the shadow was nowhere to be seen. Air long I learned that it was not myself, but only my shadow that I had lost. I learned that it is better, a thousandfold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero will barely be a man, that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work is sure of his manhood. And nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious. I only saw it too plainly to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed my ideal soon became my life. Whereas formerly my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. Now, however, I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past. Perhaps this self must again die and be buried, and again, from its tomb, spring a winged child. But of this my history as yet bears not the record. Self will come to life even in the slaying of self. But there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul. Will it be as a solemn gloom burning with eyes, or a clear morning after the rain, or a smiling child that finds itself nowhere and everywhere? End of Chapter 22