 CHAPTER I. A SPIRIT. The undulating and silent well, and rippling rivulet and evening gloom, now deepening the dark shades for speech assuming, held commune with him, as if he and it were all that was. Shelley's Alastor I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the eastern window of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour dividing a cloud that just rose above the low swell of the horizon announced the approach of the sun. As my thoughts, which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep had dissolved, began again to assume crystalline forms, the strange events of the foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wondering consciousness. The day before had been my one-and-twentieth birthday. Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal rights, the keys of an old secretary in which my father had kept his private papers had been delivered up to me. As soon as I was left alone, I ordered lights in the chamber where the secretary stood, the first lights that had been there for many a year, for since my father's death the room had been left undisturbed. But as if the darkness had been too long an inmate to be easily expelled, and had died with blackness the walls to which, bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to light up the gloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker shadows into the hollows of the deep-wrought cornice. All the further portions of the room lay shrouded in a mystery whose deepest folds were gathered around the dark oak cabinet which I now approached with a strange mingling of reverence and curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its fossil remains charred by passion and petrified by tears. Perhaps I was to learn how my father, whose personal history was unknown to me, had woven his web of story, how he had found the world and how the world had left him. Perhaps I was to find only the records of lands and moneys, how gotten and how secured, coming down from strange men and through troubleous times, to me, who knew little or nothing of them all. To solve my speculations, and to dispel the awe which was fast gathering around me, as if the dead were drawing near, I approached the secretary, and having found the key that fitted the upper portion, I opened it with some difficulty, drew near it a heavy, high-backed chair, and sat down before a multitude of little drawers and slides and pigeonholes. But the door of a little cupboard in the center especially attracted my interest, as if there lay the secret of this long, hidden world. Its key, I found. One of the rusty hinges cracked and broke as I opened the door. It revealed a number of small pigeonholes. These, however, being but shallow compared with the depth of those around the little cupboard, the outer ones reaching to the back of the desk, I concluded that there must be some accessible space behind, and found, indeed, that they were formed in a separate framework, which admitted of the hole being pulled out in one piece. Behind, I found a sort of flexible portcullis of small bars of wood laid close together horizontally. After long search and trying many ways to move it, I discovered at last a scarcely projecting point of steel on one side. I pressed this repeatedly and hard with the point of an old tool that was lying near, till at length it yielded inwards, and the little slide, flying up suddenly, disclosed a chamber. Empty, except that in one corner lay a little heap of withered rose-leaves whose long-lived scent had long since departed, and in another a small packet of papers tied with a bit of ribbon whose color had gone with the rose scent. Almost fearing to touch them, they witnessed so mutely to the law of oblivion. I leaned back in my chair and regarded them for a moment, when suddenly there stood on the threshold of the little chamber as though she had just emerged from its depth, a tiny woman form, as perfect in shape as if she had been a small Greek statuette roused to life and motion. Her dress was of a kind that could never grow old-fashioned, because it was simply natural. A robe plated in a band around the neck and confined by a belt about the waist, descended to her feet. It was only afterwards, however, that I took notice of her dress, although my surprise was by no means of so overpowering a degree as such an apparition might naturally be expected to excite. Seeing, however, as I suppose, some astonishment in my countenance, she came forward within a yard of me and said, in a voice that strangely recalled a sensation of twilight and reedy river-banks and a low wind even in this deathly room, Anadas, you never saw such a little creature before, did you? No, said I, and indeed I hardly believe I do now. Ha! that is always the way with you men. You believe nothing the first time, and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable. I am not going to argue with you, however, but to grant you a wish. Here I could not help interrupting her with a foolish speech, of which, however, I had no cause to repent. How can such a very little creature as you grant or refuse anything? Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one and twenty years? said she. Form as much, but size as nothing. It is a mere matter of relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does not feel altogether insignificant, though to others you do look small beside your old uncle Ralph, who rises above you a great half-foot at least. But size is of so little consequence with old me that I may as well accommodate myself to your foolish prejudices. So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor where she stood a tall, gracious lady with pale face and large blue eyes. Her dark hair flowed behind, wavy but uncurled down to her waist, and against it her form stood clear in its robe of white. Now, said she, you will believe me. Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now perceive, and drawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as incomprehensible, I suppose I stretched out my arms towards her, for she drew back a step or two, and said, foolish boy, if you could touch me I should hurt you. Besides, I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old last Midsummer Eve, and a man must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know. But you are not my grandmother, said I. How do you know that? she retorted. I dare say you know something of your great-grandfather's a good deal further back than that, but you know very little about your great-grandmother's on either side. Now, to the point, your little sister was reading a fairy tale to you last night. She was. When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, is there a fairy country, brother? You were plied with a sigh. I suppose there is, if one could find the way into it. I did, but I meant something quite different from what you seem to think. Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into Fairyland tomorrow. Now look in my eyes. Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I remembered somehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I looked deeper and deeper till they spread around me like seas and I sank in their waters. I forgot all the rest till I found myself at the window whose gloomy curtains were withdrawn and where I stood gazing on a whole heaven of stars, small and sparkling in the moonlight. Low lay a sea, still as death and hoary in the moon, sweeping into bays and around capes and islands, away, away I knew not wither. Alas, it was no sea, but a low bog burnished by the moon. Surely there is such a sea somewhere, said I to myself. A low, sweet voice beside me replied. In Fairyland and at us. I turned but saw no one. I closed the secretary and went to my own room and to bed. All this I recalled as I lay with half-closed eyes. I was soon to find the truth of the lady's promise that this day I should discover the road into Fairyland. CHAPTER II WHERE IS THE STREAM? cried he with tears. He is thou, it's not in blue waves above us? He looked up and low, the blue stream was flowing gently over their heads. NOVALIS, Heinrich von Afterdingen While these strange events were passing through my mind, I suddenly, as one awakes to the consciousness that the sea has been moaning by him for hours, was that the storm has been howling about his window all night, became aware of the sound of running water near me, and looking out of bed I saw that a large, green marble basin in which I was want to wash, and which stood on a low pedestal of the same material in a corner of my room, was overflowing like a spring, and that a stream of clear water was running over the carpet all the length of the room, finding its outlet I knew not where, and, stranger still, where this carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades, and the daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow. While under the rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current as if they were about to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixed form, become fluent as the waters. My dressing table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of black oak, with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carved in foliage of which Ivy formed the chief part. The nearer end of this table remained just as it had been, but on the further end a singular change had commenced. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of Ivy leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the Carver. The next looked curious. The third was unmistakably Ivy, and just beyond it a tendril of Clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle of one of the drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I looked up, and saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed were slightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow next, I thought at high time to get up, and springing from the bed my bare feet alighted upon a cool green sword, and although I dressed in all haste I found myself completing my toilet under the boughs of a great tree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many interchanging lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding over leaf and branch as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro like a sinking sea-wave. After washing as well as I could in the clear stream I rose and looked around me. A tree under which I seemed to have lain all night was one of the advanced guard of a dense forest towards which the rivulet ran. Faint traces of a foot-path, much overgrown with grass and moss, and with here and there a pimper knelt even, were discernible along the right bank. This, thought I, must surely be the path into Fairyland, which the lady of last night promised I should so soon find. I crossed the rivulet and accompanied it, keeping the foot-path on its right bank until it led me, as I expected, into the wood. After I left it, without any good reason, and with a vague feeling that I ought to have followed its course, I took a more southerly direction. CHAPTER III All space stares thee in rock, bush, river, in the face. Never thine eyes behold a tree. Tis no sea thou ceased in the sea. Tis but a disguised humanity. To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan. All that interests a man is man. Henry Sutton The trees which were far apart where I entered, giving free passage to the level of rays of the sun, closed rapidly as I advanced, so that ere long their crowded stems barred the sunlight out, forming as it were a thick grating between me and the east. I seemed to be advancing towards the second midnight. In the midst of the intervening twilight, however, before I entered would appear to be the darkest portion of the forest, I saw a country maiden coming towards me from its very depths. She did not seem to observe me, for she was apparently intent upon a bunch of wildflowers which she carried in her hand. I could hardly see her face, for though she came direct towards me, she never looked up. But when we met, instead of passing, she turned and walked alongside of me for a few yards, still keeping her face downwards and busyed with her flowers. She spoke rapidly, however, all the time in a low tone as if talking to herself but evidently addressing the purport of her words to me. She seemed afraid of being observed by some lurking foe. Trust the oak, said she, trust the oak and the elm and the great beach. Take care of the birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be changeable. But shun the ash and the alder, for the ash is an ogre. You will know him by his thick fingers, and the alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let her near you at night. All this was uttered without pause or alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly and left me, walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not conjecture what she meant, but satisfied myself with thinking that it would be time enough to find out her meaning when there was need to make use of her warning, and that the occasion would reveal the admonition. I concluded from the flowers that she carried, that the forest could not be everywhere so dense as it appeared from where I was now walking, and I was right in this conclusion. For soon I came to a more open part and by and by crossed a wide grassy glade on which were several circles of brighter green. But even here I was struck with the utter stillness. No bird sang. No insect hummed. Not a living creature cost my way. Yet somehow the whole environment seemed only asleep, and to where even in sleep an air of expectation. The trees seemed all to have an expression of conscious mystery as if they said to themselves, We could, and if we would. They had all the meaning look about them. Then I remembered that night is the fairy's day and the moon their sun, and I thought, Everything sleeps in dreams now. When the night comes it will be different. At the same time I, being a man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should fare among the elves and other children of the night, who wake when mortals dream and find their common life in those wondrous hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat them down and hold them drowned and senseless until the ebb tide comes and the waves sink away back into the ocean of the dark. But I took courage and went on. Soon, however, I became again anxious, though from another cause. I had eaten nothing that day, and for an hour past had been feeling the want of food. So I grew afraid lest I should find nothing to meet my human necessities in this strange place. But once more I comforted myself with hope and went on. Before noon I fancied I saw a thin blue smoke rising amongst the stems of larger trees in front of me, and soon I came to an open spot of ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the stems of four great trees formed its corners, while their branches met and intertwined over its roof, heaping a great cloud of leaves over it, up towards the heavens. I wondered at finding a human dwelling in this neighborhood, and yet it did not look altogether human, though sufficiently so to encourage me to expect to find some sort of food. Seeing no door I went round to the other side, and there I found one wide open, a woman sat beside it, preparing some vegetables for dinner. This was homely and comforting. As I came near she looked up, and seeing me showed no surprise, but bent her head again over her work and said in a low tone, Did you see my daughter? I believe I did, said I. Can you give me something to eat, for I am very hungry. With pleasure she replied in the same tone, but do not say anything more till you come into the house, for the ash is watching us. Having said this she rose and led the way into the cottage, which I now saw was built of the stems of small trees set closely together and was furnished with rough chairs and tables from which even the bark had not been removed. As soon as she had shut the door and set a chair, You have fairy blood in you, said she, looking hard at me. How do you know that? You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so, and I am trying to find some trace of it in your countenance. I think I see it. What do you see? Oh, never mind, I may be mistaken in that. But how then do you come to live here? Because I too have fairy blood in me. Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her and thought I could perceive notwithstanding the coarseness of her features and especially the heaviness of her eyebrows as something unusual. I could hardly call it grace, and yet it was an expression that strangely contrasted with the form of her features. I noticed too that her hands were delicately formed, though brown with work and exposure. I should be ill, she continued, if I did not live on the borders of the fairy's country and now and then eat of their food. And I see by your eyes that you are not quite free of the same need, though from your education and the activity of your mind you have felt it less than I. You may be further removed too from the fairy race. I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers. Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly apology for the homeliness of the fair with which, however, I was in no humor to quarrel. I now thought at time to try to get some explanation of the strange words both of her daughter and herself. What did you mean by speaking so about the ash? She rose and looked out of the little window. My eyes followed her, but as the window was too small to allow anything to be seen from where I was sitting, I rose and looked over her shoulder. I had just time to see across the open space on the edge of the denser forest a single large ash tree whose foliage showed bluish amidst the truer green of the other trees around it. When she pushed me back with an expression of impatience and terror and then almost shut out the light from the window by setting up a large old book in it. In general, said she, recovering her composure, there is no danger in the daytime, for then he is sound asleep, but there is something unusual going on in the woods. There must be some solemnity among the fairies tonight, for all the trees are restless and although they cannot come awake, they see and hear in their sleep. But what danger is to be dreaded from him? Instead of answering the question, she went again to the window and looked out, saying she feared the fairies would be interrupted by foul weather, for a storm was brewing in the west. And the sooner it grows dark, the sooner the ash will be awake, added she. I asked her how she knew that there was any unusual excitement in the woods. She replied, Besides the look of the trees, the dog there is unhappy, and the eyes and ears of the white rabbit are redder than usual, and he frisks about as if he expected some fun. If the cat were at home, she would have her back up, for the young fairies pulled the sparks out of her tail with bramble thorns and she knows when they are coming. So do I in another way. At this instant a gray cat rushed in like a demon and disappeared in a hole in the wall. There I told you, said the woman. But what of the ash tree, said I, returning once more to the subject? Here, however, the young woman whom I had met in the morning entered. A smile passed between the mother and daughter, and then the latter began to help her mother in little household duties. I should like to stay here till the evening, I said, and then go on my journey if you will allow me. You are welcome to do as you please, only it might be better to stay all night than risk the dangers of the wood then. Where are you going? Nay, that I do not know, I replied. But I wish to see all that is to be seen, and therefore I should like to start just at sundown. You are a bold youth if you have any idea of what you are daring, but a rash one if you know nothing about it. And excuse me, you do not seem very well informed about the country and its manners. However, no one comes here but for some reason, either known to himself or to those who have charge of him. So you shall do as you wish. Accordingly I sat down, and feeling rather tired and disinclined for further talk, I asked leave to look at the old book which still screened the window. The woman brought it to me directly, but not before taking another look towards the forest, and then drawing a white blind over the window. I sat down opposite to it by the table on which I laid the great old volume and read. It contained many wondrous tales of fairyland and olden times and the nights of King Arthur's table. I read on and on till the shades of the afternoon began to deepen, for in the midst of the forest it gloomed earlier than in the open country. At length I came to this passage. Here it chanced that upon their quest Sir Galahad and Sir Percival were encountered in the depths of a great forest. Now Sir Galahad was dyed all in harness of silver, clear and shining. The witch is a delight to look upon, but full hasty to tarnish, and without him the labour of a ready squire uneathed to be kept fair and clean. In yet without a squire or page Sir Galahad's armor shone like the moon, and he wrote a great white mare whose bases and other houses were black, but all besprint with fair lilies of silver sheen. Whereas Sir Percival bestrowed a red horse, with a tawny mane and tail, whose trappings were all too smirched with mud and mire, and his armor was wondrous, rusty to behold. Nay could he buy any art furbish it again, so that as the sun, in his going down, shone twixed the bare trunks of the trees, full upon the night's twain the one did seem all shining with light, and the other all to glow with ready fire. Now it came about in this wise, for Sir Percival, after his escape from the demon-lady, when asked to cross on the handle of his sword smote him to the heart, and he rove himself through the thigh and escaped away, he came to a great wood, and a know-wise cured of his fault, yet bemoaning the same, the damocel of the alder tree encountered him right fair to see, and with her fair words and false countenance she comforted him and beguiled him, until he followed her where she led him to a— Here a low, hurried cry from my hostess caused me to look up from the book, and I read no more. Look there, she said, look at his fingers! Just as I had been reading in the book, the setting sun was shining through a cleft in the clouds piled up in the west, and a shadow was of a large distorted hand with thick knobs and humps on the fingers, so that it was much wider across the fingers than across the undivided part of the hand, passed slowly over the little blind, and then slowly returned in the opposite direction. He is almost awake, mother, and greater than usual to-night. Hush, child, you need not make him more angry with us than he is, for you do not know how soon something may happen to oblige us to be in the forest after nightfall. But you are in the forest, said I. How is it that you are safe here? He dares not come nearer than he is now, she replied, for any of those four oaks at the corners of our cottage would tear him to pieces. They are our friends. But he stands there and makes awful faces at us sometimes, and stretches out his long arms and fingers and tries to kill us with fright. For indeed that is his favourite way of doing. Pray, keep out of his way to-night. Shall I be able to see these things? said I. But I cannot tell, not knowing how much of the fairy nature there is in you. But we shall soon see whether you can discern the fairies in my little garden, and that will be some guide to us. Are the trees fairies too, as well as the flowers? I asked. They are of the same race, she replied. Though those you call fairies in your country are chiefly the young children of the flower fairies, they are very fond of having fun with the thick people, as they call you, for like most children they like fun better than anything else. Why do you have flowers so near you, then? Do they not annoy you? Oh no, they are very amusing, with their mimicries of grown people and mocked salemnities. Sometimes they will act a whole play through before my eyes, with perfect composure and assurance, for they are not afraid of me. Only as soon as they have done they burst into peals of tiny laughter as if it was such a joke to have been serious over anything. These I speak of, however, are the fairies of the garden. They are more staid and educated than those of the fields and woods. Of course they have near relations amongst the wild flowers, but they patronize them and treat them as country cousins who know nothing of life and very little of manners. Now and then, however, they are compelled to envy the grace and simplicity of the natural flowers. Do they live in the flowers? I said. I cannot tell, she replied. There is something in it I do not understand. Sometimes they disappear altogether, even from thee. Though I know they are near. They seem to die always with the flowers they resemble, and by whose names they are called. But whether they return to life with the fresh flowers or whether it be new flowers, new fairies, I cannot tell. They have as many sorts of dispositions as men and women, while their moods are yet more variable. Twenty different expressions will cross their little faces in half a minute. I often amuse myself with watching them, but I have never been able to make personal acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she looks up in my face as if I were not worth heeding, gives a little laugh, and runs away. Here the woman started as if suddenly recollecting herself and said in a low voice to her daughter, Make haste! Go and watch him, and see in what direction he goes. I may as well mention here that the conclusions I arrived at from the observations I was afterwards able to make was that the flowers die because the fairies go away, not that the fairies disappear because the flowers die. The flowers seem a sort of houses for them, or outer bodies, which they can put on or off when they please. Just as you could form some idea of the nature of a man from the kind of house he built if he followed his own taste, so you could, without seeing the fairies, tell what any one of them is like by looking at the flower till you feel that you understand it. For just what the flower says to you, would the face in form of the fairy say? Only so much more plainly as a face and a human figure can express more than a flower. For the house or the clothes, though like in the inhabitant or the wearer, cannot be wrought into an equal power of utterance. Yet you would see a strange resemblance, almost oneness, between the flower and the fairy, which you could not describe but which described itself to you. Whether all the flowers have fairies that cannot determine, any more than I can be sure whether all men and women have souls. The woman and I continued the conversation for a few minutes longer. I was much interested by the information she gave me and astonished at the language in which she was able to convey it. It seemed that intercourse with the fairies was no bad education in itself. But now the daughter returned with the news that the ash had just gone away in a southwesterly direction, and as my course seemed to lie eastward she hoped I should be in no danger of meeting him if I departed at once. I looked out of the little window and there stood the ash-tree to my eyes the same as before, but I believed that they knew better than I did and prepared to go. I pulled out my purse, but to my dismay there was nothing in it. The woman with a smile begged me not to trouble myself. For money was not of the slightest use there, and as I might meet with people in my journeys whom I could not recognize to be fairies it was well I had no money to offer, or nothing offended them so much. They would think, she added, that you were making game of them, and that is their peculiar privilege with regard to us. So we went together into the little garden which sloped down towards her a lower part of the wood. Here to my great pleasure all was life and bustle. There was still light enough from the day to see a little, and the pale half-moon, halfway to the zenith, was reviving every moment. The whole garden was like a carnival with tiny, gaily decorated forms and groups, assemblies, processions, pairs or trios, moving stately on, running about wildly, or sauntering hither or thither. From the cups or bells of tall flowers as from balconies some looked down on the masses below, now bursting with laughter, now grave as owls. But even in their deepest solemnity, seeming only to be waiting for the arrival of the next laugh, some were launched on a little marshy stream at the bottom, in boats chosen from the heaps of last year's leaves that lay about, curled and withered. These soon sank with them, whereupon they swam ashore and got others. Those who took fresh rose-leaves for their boats floated the longest, but for these they had to fight, for the fairy of the rose-tree complained bitterly that they were stealing her clothes and defended her property bravely. You can't wear half you got, said some. Never you mind. I don't choose you to have them. They are my property. All for the good of the community, said one, and ran off with a great hollow leaf. But the rose-fairy sprang after him, what a beauty she was, only too like a drawing-room young lady, knocked him heels overhead as he ran, and recovered her great red leaf. But in the meantime, twenty had hurried off in different directions with others just as good, and the little creature sat down and cried, and then, in a pet, sent a perfect pink snowstorm of petals from a tree leaping from branch to branch and stamping and shaking and pulling. At last, after another good cry, she chose the biggest she could find and ran away laughing to launch her boat amongst the rest. But my attention was first and chiefly attracted by a group of fairies near the cottage who were talking together around what seemed a last dying primrose. They talked singing, and their talk made a song, something like this. Sister Snowdrop died before we were born. She came like a bridge in a snowy morn. What's a bridge? What is snow? Never tried. Do not know. Who told you about her? Little primrose there cannot do without her. Oh, so sweetly fair. Never fear. She will come, primrose dear. Is she dumb? She'll come by and by. You will never see her. She went home to dyes. Till the new year, Snowdrop, it is no good to invite her. Primrose is very rude. I will bite her. Oh, you naughty pocket. Look, she drops her head. She deserved it, rocket, and she was nearly dead. To your hammock off with you, and swing alone. No one will laugh with you. No, not one. Now let us moan and cover o'er. Primrose is gone, all with the flower. Here is a leaf. Lay her upon it. Following grief. Pocket has done it. Deeper, poor creature, winter may come. He cannot reach her. That is a hum. She has buried the beauty. Now she is done. That was the duty. Now for the fun. And with a wild laugh they sprang away, most of them towards the cottage. During the latter part of the song-talk they had formed themselves into a funeral procession, two of them bearing poor Primrose, whose death pocket had hastened by biting her stock. Upon one of her own great leaves they bore her solemnly along some distance and then buried her under a tree. Although I say her, I saw nothing but the withered Primrose flower on its long stock. Pocket, who had been expelled from the company by common consent, went sulkily away towards her hammock. For she was the fairy of the Calciolaria and looked rather wicked. When she reached its stem she stopped and looked round. I could not help speaking to her for I stood near her. I said, Pocket, how could you be so naughty? I am never naughty, she said, half crossly, half defiantly. Only if you come near my hammock I will bite you and then you will go away. Why did you bite poor Primrose? Because she said we should never see snow drop as if we were not good enough to look at her and she was the proud thing. Served her right. Oh, Pocket, Pocket, said I. But by this time the party which had gone towards the house rushed out again, shouting and screaming with laughter. Half of them were in the cat's back and half held on by her fur and tail or ran beside her. Till, more coming to their help, the furious cat was held fast and they proceeded to pick the sparks out of her with thorns and pins which they handled like harpoons. Indeed there were more instruments at work about her than there could have been sparks in her. One little fellow who held on hard by the tip of the tail with his feet planted on the ground at an angle of forty-five degrees helping to keep her fast administered a continuous flow of admonitions to Pussy. Now, Pussy, be patient. You know quite well it is all for your good. You cannot be comfortable with all those sparks in you, and indeed I am charitably disposed to believe—here he became very pompous—that they are the cause of all your bad temper. So we must have them all out, every one, else we shall be reduced to the painful necessity of cutting your claws and pulling out your eye teeth. Quiet! Pussy, quiet! But with a perfect hurricane of feline curses the poor animal broke loose and dashed across the garden and through the hedge faster than even the fairies could follow. Never mind, never mind, we shall find her again, and by that time she will have laid in a fresh stock of sparks. Hooray! And off they sat after some new mischief. But I will not linger to enlarge on the musing display of these frolicsome creatures. Their manners and habits are now so well known to the world, having been so often described by eyewitnesses, that it would be only indulging self-conceit to add my account in full to the rest. I cannot help wishing, however, that my readers could see them for themselves, especially do I desire that they should see the fairy of the daisy, a little chubby, round-eyed child with such innocent trust in his look. Even the most mischievous of the fairies would not tease him, although he did not belong to their set at all, but was quite a little country bumpkin. He wandered about alone and looked at everything with his hands and his little pockets and a white night-cap on the darling. He was not so beautiful as many other wildflowers I saw afterwards, but so dear and loving in his looks and little confident ways. CHAPTER IV When Bala is at Highest, Buta is Niest. By this time my hostess was quite anxious that I should be gone. So, with warm thanks for their hospitality, I took my leave and went my way through the little garden towards the forest. Some of the garden flowers had wandered into the wood and were growing here and there along the path, but the trees soon became too thick and shadowy for them. I particularly noticed some tall lilies, which grew on both sides of the way, with large, dazzlingly white flowers set off by the universal green. It was now dark enough for me to see that every flower was shining with a light of its own. Indeed, it was by this light that I saw them, an internal, peculiar light, proceeding from each, and not reflected from a common source of light as in the daytime. This light sufficed only for the plant itself, and was not strong enough to cast any but the faintest shadows around it, or to illuminate any of the neighboring objects with other than the faintest tinge of its own individual hue. From the lilies above mentioned, from the campanulas, from the fox-gloves, and every bell-shaped flower, curious little figures shot up their heads, peeped at me, and drew back. They seemed to inhabit them as snails their shells, but I was sure some of them were intruders and belonged to the gnomes or goblin fairies who inhabit the ground and earthy creeping plants. From the cups of arum lilies, creatures with great heads and grotesque faces shot up like jack-in-the-box, and made grimaces at me, or rose slowly and slyly over the edge of the cup, and sprouted water at me, slipping suddenly back like those little soldier-craps that inhabit the shells of sea snails. Passing a row of tall thistles, I saw them crowded with little faces which peeped every one of them behind its flower, and drew back as quickly, and I heard them saying to each other, evidently intending me to hear, but the speaker always hiding behind his tuft when I looked in his direction. Look at him! Look at him! He's begun a story without a beginning, and it will never have any end. He! He! He! Look at him! But as I went further into the wood these sights and sounds became fewer, giving way to others of a different character. A little forest of wild hyacinths was alive with exquisite creatures who stood nearly motionless with drooping necks, holding each by the stem of her flower, and swaying gently with it whenever a low breath of wind swung the crowded floral belfry. In like manner, though differing of course in form and meaning, stood a group of herabelles like little angels waiting, ready, till they were wanted to go on some yet unknown message. In darker nooks, by the mossy roots of the trees, or in little tufts of grass, each dwelling in a globe of its own green light, weaving a network of grass in its shadow, glowed the glowworms. They were just like the glowworms of our own land, for they are fairies everywhere, worms in the day and glowworms at night when their own can appear, and they can be themselves to others as well as themselves. But they had their enemies here, for I saw great, strong-armed beetles, hurrying about with most unwieldy haste, looking apparently for glowworms. For the moment a beetle aspired one, through what to it was a forest of grass, or an underwood of moss, it pounced upon it and bored away in spite of its feeble resistance. Wondering what their object could be, I watched one of the beetles, and then I discovered a thing I could not account for. But it is no use trying to account for things in fairy land, and one who travels there soon learns to forget the very idea of doing so and takes everything as it comes, like a child who, being in a chronic condition of wonder, is surprised at nothing. But what I saw was this. Everywhere, here and there over the ground lay little dark-looking lumps of something more like earth than anything else, and about the size of a chestnut. The beetles hunted in couples for these, and having found one, one of these stayed to watch it, while the other hurried to find a glowworm. By signals, I presume, between them, the latter soon found his companion again. They then took the glowworm and held its luminous tail to the dark earthy pellet. When low, it shot up into the air like a skyrocket, seldom, however, reaching the height of the highest tree. Just like a rocket, too, it burst in the air and fell in a shower of the most gorgeously colored sparks of every variety of hue, golden and red and purple and green and blue and rosy fires crossed and intercrossed each other beneath the shadowy heads and between the columnar stems of the forest trees. They never used the same glowworm twice, I observed, but let him go, apparently uninjured by the use they had made of him. In other parts, the whole of the immediately surrounding foliage was illuminated by the interwoven dances in the air of splendidly colored fireflies, which sped hither and thither, turned, twisted, crossed, and recrossed, entwining every complexity of intervolved motion. Here and there whole mighty trees glowed with an emitted phosphorescent light. You could trace the very course of the great roots in the earth by the faint light that came through, and every twig, and every vein on every leaf was a streak of pale fire. All this time as I went through the wood I was haunted with the feeling that other shapes, more like my own size and mean, were moving about at a little distance on all sides of me. But as yet I could discern none of them, although the moon was high enough to send a great many of her rays down between the trees, and these rays were unusually bright and sight-giving, notwithstanding she was only a half-moon. I constantly imagined, however, that forms were visible in all directions except to that which my gaze was turned, and that they only became invisible, or resolved themselves into other woodland shapes the moment my looks were directed towards them. However this may have been, except for this feeling of sense, the wood seemed utterly bare of anything like human companionship, although my glance often fell on some object which I fancied to be a human form. For I soon found that I was quite deceived, as the moment I fixed my regard on it it showed plainly that it was a bush, or a tree, or a rock. Soon a vague sense of discomfort possessed me. With variations of relief this gradually increased as if some evil thing were wandering about in my neighborhood, sometimes nearer and sometimes further off, but still approaching. The feeling continued and deepened until all my pleasure in the shows of various kinds that everywhere betokened the presence of the merry fairies vanished by degrees, and left me full of anxiety and fear which I was unable to associate with any definite object whatever. At length a thought crossed my mind with horror. Can it be possible that the ash is looking for me, or that in his nightly wanderings his path is gradually verging towards mine? I comforted myself, however, by remembering that he had started quite in another direction, one that would lead him if he kept it far apart from me, especially as, for the last two or three hours I had been diligently journeying eastward. I kept on my way, therefore, striving by direct effort of the will against the encroaching fear, and to this end occupying my mind as much as I could with other thoughts. I was so far successful that, although I was conscious, if I yielded for a moment, I should be almost overwhelmed with horror, I was yet able to walk right on for an hour or more. What I feared I could not tell. Indeed, I was left in a state of the vaguest uncertainty as regarded the nature of my enemy, and knew not the mode or object of his attacks. For somehow or other, none of my questions had succeeded in drawing a definite answer from the dame in the cottage. How then to defend myself I knew not! Nor even by what sign I might with certainty recognize the presence of my foe, for as yet this vague though powerful fear was all the indication of danger I had. To add to my distress the clouds in the west had risen nearly to the top of the skies, and they and the moon were travelling slowly towards each other. Indeed, some of their advanced guard had already met her, and she had begun to wade through a filmy vapor that gradually deepened. At length she was for a moment almost entirely obscured. When she shone out again with a brilliancy increased by the contrast, I saw plainly on the path before me, from around which at this spot the trees are seated, leaving a small space of green sword, the shadow of a large hand with knotty joints and protuberances here and there. Especially I remarked, even in the midst of my fear, the bulbous points of the fingers. I looked hurriedly all around, but could see nothing from which such a shadow should fall. Now, however, that I had a direction, however undetermined, in which to project my apprehension, the very sense of danger and need of action overcame that stifling which is the worst property of fear. I reflected in a moment that if this were indeed a shadow, it was useless to look for the object that casted in any other direction than between the shadow and the moon. I looked, and peered, and intensified my vision, all to no purpose. I could see nothing of that kind, not even an ash tree in the neighborhood. Still the shadow remained, not steady but moving to and fro, and once I saw the fingers close and grind themselves close like the claws of a wild animal as if in uncontrollable longing for some anticipated prey. There seemed but one mode left of discovering the substance of this shadow. I went forward boldly, though with an inward shutter which I would not heed, to the spot where the shadow lay, threw myself on the ground, laid my head within the form of the hand, and turned my eyes towards the moon. Good heavens! What did I see? I wondered that ever I rose, and that the very shadow of the hand did not hold me where I lay until fear had frozen my brain. I saw the strangest figure, vague, shadowy, almost transparent in the central parts, and gradually deepening in substance towards the outside until it ended in extremities capable of casting such a shadow as fell from the hand through the awful fingers of which I now saw the moon. The hand was uplifted in the attitude of a paw about to strike its prey. But the face which throbbed with fluctuating impulsatory visibility, not from changes in the light it reflected, but from changes in its own conditions of reflecting power, the alterations being from within, not from without, it was horrible. I do not know how to describe it. It caused a new sensation. Just as one cannot translate a horrible odor, or a ghastly pain or a fearful sound into words, so I cannot describe this new form of awful hideousness. I can only try to describe something that is not it, but seems somewhat parallel to it, or at least is suggested by it. It reminded me of what I had heard of vampires. For the face resembled that of a corpse more than anything else I can think of, especially when I can conceive such a face in motion, but not suggesting any life as the source of the motion. The features were rather handsome than otherwise except the mouth, which had scarcely a curve in it. The lips were of equal thickness, but the thickness was not at all remarkable, even although they looked slightly swollen. They seemed fixedly open, but were not wide apart. Of course I did not remark these lineaments at the time. I was too horrified for that. I noted them afterwards when the form returned on my inward sight with a vividness too intense to admit of my doubting the accuracy of the reflex. But the most awful of the features were the eyes. These were alive, yet not with life. They seemed lighted up with an infinite greed, a gnawing veracity which devoured the devourer seemed to be the indwelling and propelling power of the whole ghostly apparition. I lay for a few moments simply imbrewed with terror when another cloud obscuring the moon delivered me from the immediately paralyzing effects of the presence to the vision of the objects of horror, while it added the force of imagination to the power of fear within me. In as much as, knowing far worse cause for apprehension than before, I remained equally ignorant from what I had to defend myself or how to take any precautions. He might be upon me in the darkness any moment. I sprang to my feet and sped I knew not wither, only away from the spectre. I thought no longer the path and often narrowly escaped dashing myself against a tree in my headlong flight of fear. Great drops of rain began to patter on the leaves. Thunder began to mutter, then growl in the distance. I ran on. The rain fell heavier. At length the thick leaves could hold it up no longer, and like a second firmament they poured their torrents on the earth. I was soon drenched, but that was nothing. I came to a small swollen stream that rushed through the woods. I had a vague hope that if I crossed this stream I should be in safety for my pursuer, but I soon found that my hope was as false as it was vague. I dashed across the stream, ascended a rising ground, and reached a more open space, where stood only great trees. Through them I directed my way, holding eastward as nearly as I could guess, but not at all certain that I was not moving in an opposite direction. My mind was just reviving a little from its extreme terror when suddenly a flash of lightning, or rather a cataract of successive flashes behind me, seemed to throw on the ground in front of me, but far more faintly than before, from the extent of the source of the light, the shadow of the same horrible hand. I sprang forward, stung to yet wilder speed, but had not run many steps before my foot slipped, and, vainly attempting to recover myself, I fell at the foot of one of the large trees. Half-stunned I yet raised myself, and almost involuntarily looked back. All I saw was the hand within three feet of my face, but at the same moment I felt two large, soft arms thrown round me from behind, and a voice like a woman said, Do not fear the goblin, he dares not hurt you now. With that the hand was suddenly withdrawn as from a fire, and disappeared in the darkness and the rain. Overcome with the mingling of terror and joy, I lay for some time almost insensible. The first thing I remember is the sound of a voice above me, full and low, and strangely reminding me of the sound of a gentle wind amidst the leaves of a great tree. In murmured over and over again, I may love him, I may love him, for he is a man and I am only a beech-tree. I found I was seated on the ground, leaning against a human form and supported still by the arms around me, which I knew to be those of a woman who must be rather above the human size and largely proportioned. I turned my head, but without moving otherwise, for I feared lest the arms should entwine themselves, and clear, somewhat mournful eyes met mine. At least that is how they impressed me, but I could see very little of color or outline as we sat in the dark and rainy shadow of the tree. The face seemed very lovely and solemn from its stillness, with the aspect of one who is quite content, but waiting for something. I saw my conjecture from her arms was correct. She was above the human scale throughout, but not greatly. Why do you call yourself a beech-tree? I said. Because I am one. She replied in the same low, musical, murmuring voice. You are a woman! I returned. Do you think so? Am I very like a woman, then? You are a very beautiful woman. Is it possible you should not know it? I am very glad you think so. I fancy I feel like a woman sometimes. I do so to-night, and always when the rain trips from my hair, for there is an old prophecy in our woods that one day we shall all be men and women like you. Do you know anything about it in your region? Shall I be very happy when I am a woman? I fear not, for it is always in nights like these that I feel like one, but I long to be a woman for all that. I had let her talk on, for her voice was like a solution of all musical sounds. I now told her that I could hardly say whether women were happy or not. I knew one who had not been happy, and for my part I had often longed for fairyland, as she now longed for the world of men. But then neither of us had lived long, and perhaps people grew happier as they grew older. Only I doubted it. I could not help sighing. She felt the sigh, for her arms were still round me. She asked me how old I was. Twenty-one, said I. Why, you baby! said she, and kissed me with the sweetest kiss of winds and odours. There was a cool faithfulness in the kiss that revived my heart wonderfully. I felt that I feared the dreadful ash no more. What did the horrible ash want with me? I said. I am not quite sure, but I think he wants to bury you at the foot of his tree. But he shall not touch you, my child. Are all the ash trees as dreadful as he? Oh, no! They are all disagreeable, selfish creatures. What horrid men they will make if it be true! But this one has a hole in his heart that nobody knows of but one or two, and he is always trying to fill it up, but he cannot. That must be what he wanted you for. I wonder if he will ever be a man. If he is, I hope they will kill him. How kind of you to save me from him. I will take care that he shall not come near you again, but there are some in the wood more like me, from whom alas I cannot protect you. Only if you see any of them very beautiful try to walk round them. What then? I cannot tell you more, but now I must tie some of my hair about you, and then the ash will not touch you. Here, cut some off. You men have strange cutting things about you. She shook her long hair loose over me, never moving her arms. I can't cut your beautiful hair. It would be a shame. Not cut my hair. It will have grown long enough before any is wanted again in this wild forest. Perhaps it may never be of any use again. Not till I am a woman. And she sighed. As gently as I could I cut with a knife a long tress of flowing dark hair, she hanging her beautiful head over me. When I had finished she shuddered and breathed deep as one does when in acute pain steadfastly endured without sign of suffering is at length relaxed. She then took the hair and tied it round me, singing a strange sweet song which I could not understand but which left in me a feeling like this. I saw thee near before, I see thee never more, but love and help and pain, beautiful one, have made thee mine till all my years are done. I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me again and went on singing. The rain and the leaves and a light wind that had arisen kept her song company. I was wrapped in a trance of still delight. It told me the secret of the woods and the flowers and the birds. At one time I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things. I had almost had creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers at every turn. At another I lay half-dreaming in the hot summer noon with the book of old tales beside me beneath a great beach, or in autumn grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered me and received their last blessing in the sweet odors of decay. Or in a winter evening, frozen still, looked up as I went home to a warm fireside through the netted boughs and twigs to the cold, snowy moon with her opal zone around her. At last I had fallen asleep, for I know nothing more that passed till I found myself lying under a superb beach-tree in the clear light of the morning just before sunrise. Around me was a girdle of fresh beach-leaves. Alas! I run nothing with me at a fairyland but memories. Memories. The great boughs of the beach hung drooping around me. At the head rose its smooth stem with its great sweeps of curving surface that swirled like undeveloped limbs. The leaves and branches above kept on the song which had sung me asleep. Only now, to my mind, it sounded like a farewell and a speedwell. I sat a long time unwilling to go, but my unfinished story urged me on. I must act and wander. With the sun well risen I rose and put my arms as far as they would reach around the beach-tree and kissed it and said good-bye. A trembling went through the leaves. A few of the last drops of the night's rain fell from off them at my feet, and as I walked slowly away I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the words, I may love him, I may love him, for he is a man, and I am only a beach-tree. End of Chapter 4 Fantasties by George MacDonald This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 5 And she was smooth and full as if one gush of life had washed her, or as if a sleep lay on her eyelid easier to sweep than be from Daisy. Bidwas Pygmalion She was as white as Lily in May, or snow that snoweth in wintery's day. Romance of Sir Lawnfall I walked on in the fresh morning air as if new-born. The only thing that damped my pleasure was a cloud of something between sorrow and delight that crossed my mind with the frequently returning thought of my last night's hostess. But then, thought I, if she is sorry, I could not help it, and she has all the pleasure she ever had. Such a day as this has surely adjoined her as much at least as to me, and her life will perhaps be the richer for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay. And if ever she is a woman, who knows but we may meet somewhere. There is plenty of room for a meeting in the universe. Comforting myself thus, yet with a vague compunction as if I ought not to have left her, I went on. There was little to distinguish the woods today from those of my own land, except that all the wild things, rabbits, birds, squirrels, mice, and the numberless other inhabitants, were very tame. That is, they did not run away from me but gazed at me as I passed, frequently coming nearer as if to examine me more closely. Whether this came from utter ignorance or from familiarity with the human appearance of beings who never hurt them, I could not tell. As I stood once, looking up to the splendid flower of a parasite, which hung from the branch of a tree over my head, a large white rabbit cantered slowly up, put one of its little feet on one of mine, and looked up at me with its red eyes, just as I had been looking up at the flower above me. I stooped and stroked it, but when I attempted to lift it, it banged the ground with its hind feet and scampered off at a great rate, turning, however, to look at me several times before I lost sight of it. Now and then, too, a dim human figure would appear and disappear at some distance amongst the trees, moving like a sleepwalker. But no one ever came near me. This day I found plenty of food in the forest, strange nuts and fruits I had never seen before. I hesitated to eat them, but argued that if I could live on the air of fairyland I could live on its food also. I found my reasoning correct, and the result was better than I had hoped, for it not only satisfied my hunger but operated in such a way upon my senses that I was brought into far more complete relationship with the things around me. The human forms appeared much more dense and defined, more tangibly visible, if I may say so. I seemed to know better which direction to choose when any doubt arose. I began to feel, in some degree, what the birds meant in their songs, though I could not express it in words, any more than you can some landscapes. At times, to my surprise, I found myself listening attentively, and as if it were no unusual thing with me, to a conversation between two squirrels or monkeys. The subjects were not very interesting, except as associated with the individual life and necessities of the little creatures. Where the best nuts were to be found in the neighborhood, and who could crack them best, or who had most laid up for the winter, and such like. Only they never said where the store was. There was no great difference in kind between their talk and our ordinary human conversation. Some of the creatures I never heard speak at all, and I believe they never do so except under the impulse of some great excitement. The mice talked, but the hedgehog seemed very phlegmatic. And though I met a couple of moles above ground several times, they never said a word to each other in my hearing. There were no wild beasts in the forest, at least I did not see one larger than a wildcat. There were plenty of snakes, however, and I do not think they were all harmless. But none ever bit me. Soon after midday I arrived at a bare rocky hill of no great size but very steep, and having no trees, scarcely even a bush upon it, entirely exposed to the heat of the sun. Over this my way seemed to lie, and I immediately began the ascent. On reaching the top, hot and weary, I looked around me and saw that the forest still stretched as far as the sight could reach on every side of me. I observed that the trees, in the direction in which I was about to descend, did not come so near the foot of the hill as on the other side, and was especially regretting the unexpected postponement of shelter, because this side of the hill seemed more difficult to descend than the other had been to climb, when my eye caught the appearance of a natural path winding down through broken rocks and along the course of a tiny stream, which I hoped would lead me more easily to the foot. I tried it, and found the descent not at all laborious. Nevertheless when I reached the bottom I was very tired and exhausted with the heat. But just where the path seemed to end was a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs and creeping plants, some of them in full and splendid blossom. These almost concealed an opening in the rock into which the path appeared to lead. I entered, thirsting for the shade which it promised. What was my delight to find a rocky cell, all the angles rounded away with rich moss, and every ledge and projection crowded with lovely ferns, the variety of whose forms, in groupings, and shades wrought in me like a poem, for such a harmony could not exist except they all consented to some one end. A little well of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow in one corner. I drank and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life must be. Then threw myself on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along the inner end. Here I lay in a delicious reverie for some time, during which all lovely forms, and colors, and sounds seemed to use my brain as a common hall where they could come and go unbidden and unexcused. I had never imagined that such capacity for simple happiness lay in me, as was now awakened by this assembly of forms and spiritual sensations which yet were far too vague to admit of being translated into any shape common to my own and another mind. I had lain for an hour, I should suppose, though it may have been far longer when, the harmonious tumult in my mind having somewhat relaxed, I became aware that my eyes were fixed on a strange, time-worn base relief on the rock opposite to me. This after some pondering I concluded to represent Pygmalion, as he awaited the quickening of his statue. The sculpture sat more rigid than the figure to which his eyes were turned. That seemed about to step from its pedestal and embrace the man who waited rather than expected. A lovely story, I said to myself, this cave now, with the bushes cut away from the entrance to let the light in, might be such a place as he would choose, withdrawn from the notice of men, to set up his block of marble and mold into a visible body the thought already clothed with form in the unseen hall of the sculptor's brain. And indeed, if I mistake not, I said, starting up, as a sudden ray of light arrived at that moment through a crevice in the roof, and lighted up a small portion of the rock bare of vegetation. This very rock is marble, wide enough and delicate enough for any statue, even if destined to become an ideal woman in the arms of the sculptor. I took my knife and removed the moss from a part of the block on which I had been lying, when, to my surprise, I found it more like alabaster than ordinary marble, and soft to the edge of the knife. In fact, it was alabaster, by an inexplicable, though by no means unusual, kind of impulse. I went on removing the moss from the surface of the stone, and soon saw that it was polished, or at least smooth, throughout. I continued my labor, and after clearing a space of about a couple of square feet, I observed what caused me to prosecute the work with more interest and care than before. For the ray of sunlight had now reached the spot I had cleared, and under its luster and alabaster revealed its usual slight transparency when polished, except where my knife had scratched the surface. Then I observed that the transparency seemed to have a definite limit and to end upon an opaque body like the more solid white marble. I was careful to scratch no more, and first a vague anticipation gave way to a startling sense of possibility. Then as I proceeded, one revelation after another produced the entrancing conviction that under the crust of alabaster lay a dimly visible form in marble, but whether of man or woman I could not yet tell. I worked on as rapidly as the necessary care would permit, and when I had uncovered the whole mass and rising from my knees had retreated a little way, so that the effect of the whole might fall on me, I saw before me with sufficient plainness, though at the same time with considerable indistinctness, a rising from the limited amount of light the place admitted, as well as from the nature of the object itself, a block of pure alabaster enclosing the form, apparently in marble, of a reposing woman. She lay on one side, with her hand under her cheek, and her face towards me, but her hair had fallen partly over her face, so that I could not see the expression of the whole. What I did see appeared to me perfectly lovely, more near the face that had been born with me in my soul than anything I had seen before in nature or art. The actual outlines of the rest of the form were so indistinct that the more than semi-opacity of the alabaster seemed insufficient to account for the fact, and I conjectured that a light robe added its obscurity. Numberless history has passed through my mind of change of substance from enchantment and other causes, and of imprisonment such as this before me. I thought of the prince of the enchanted city, half marble and half a man, of Ariel, of Nairobi, of the sleeping beauty in the wood, of the bleeding trees, and many other histories. Even my adventure of the preceding evening with the lady of the beach-tree contributed to arouse the wild hope that by some means life might be given to this form also, and that breaking from her alabaster tomb she might glorify my eyes with her presence. Four, I argued, who can tell but this cave may be the home of marble, and this, essential marble, that spirit of marble which, present throughout, makes it capable of being molded into any form, then if she should awake, but how to awake her? A kiss awoke the sleeping beauty. A kiss cannot reach her through the encrusting alabaster. I kneeled, however, and kissed the pale coffin, but she slept on. I bethought me of Orpheus, and the following stones, that trees should follow his music seemed nothing surprising now. Might not a song awake this form, as the glory of motion might for a time displace the loveliness of rest? Sweet sounds can go where kisses may not enter. I sat and thought. Now, although always delighting in music, I had never been gifted with the power of song until I entered the fairy forest. I had a voice, and I had a true sense of sound, but when I tried to sing, the one would not content the other, and so I remained silent. This morning, however, I had found myself, ere I was aware, rejoicing in a song. But whether it was before or after I had eaten of the fruits of the forest, I could not satisfy myself. I concluded it was after, however, and that the increased impulse to sing I now felt was in part owing to having drunk of the little well which shone like a brilliant eye in a corner of the cave. I sat down on the ground by the antinatal tone, leaned upon it with my face towards the head of the figure within, and sang. The words and tones coming together and inseparably connected as if word and tone formed one thing, or as if each word could be uttered only in that tone, and was incapable of distinction from it, except an idea by an acute analysis. I sang something like this, but the words are only a dull representation of a state whose very elevation precluded the possibility of remembrance, and in which I presumed the words really employed were as far above these as that state transcended this wherein I recall it. Marble women vainly sleeping, in the very death of dreams, wilt thou slumber from thee sweeping, all but that with vision teams, hear my voice come through the golden mist of memory and hope, and with shadowy smile emboldened me with primal death the cope. Thee, the sculptors all pursuing, have embodied but their own. Round of their visions, form enduring, Marble vestments thou hast thrown. But thyself, in silence winding, thou hast kept eternally. Thee they found not, many finding, I have found thee. Wake for me. As I sang, I looked earnestly at the face so vaguely revealed before me. I fancied, yet believed it to be but fancy, that through the dim veil of the alabaster I saw a motion of the head as if caused by a sinking sigh. I gazed more earnestly, and concluded that it was but fancy. Nevertheless I could not help singing again. Rest is now filled full of beauty, and can give thee up by wean. Come thou forth, for other duty motion pineth for her queen. Or if needing years to wake thee from thy slumber of solitudes, come sleepwalking and butake thee to the friendly sleeping woods. Sweeter dreams are in the forest, round thee storms would never rave, and when need of rest is soarest, glide thou then into thy cave. Or if still thou chooseest rather Marble, be its spell on me. Let thy slumber round me gather, let another dream with thee. Then I paused and gazed through the stony shroud, as if by very force of penetrative sight I would clear every liniment of the lovely face. And now I thought the hand that had lain under the cheek had slipped a little downward, but that I could not be sure that I had at first observed its position accurately. So I sang again, for the longing had grown into a passionate need of seeing her alive. More art thou death, O woman, for since I have set me singing by thy side. Life hath forsuit the upper sky, and all the outer world hath died. Yea, I am dead, for thou hast drawn my life all downward unto thee. Dead moon of love, let twilight dawn, awake, and let the darkness flee. Cold lady of the lovely stone, awake, or I shall perish here, and thou be never more alone, my form and I for ages near. But words are vain, reject them all, they utter but a feeble part. Hear thou the depths from which they call, the voiceless longing of my heart. There arose a slightly crashing sound, like a sudden apparition that comes and is gone, a white form veiled in a light robe of whiteness, burst upwards from the stone, stood, glided forth, and gleamed away towards the woods. For I followed to the mouth of the cave as soon as the amazement and concentration of the delight permitted the nerves of motion again to act, and saw the white form amidst the trees as it crossed the little glade on the edge of the forest where the sunlight fell full, seeming to gather with intense irradiance on the one object that floated rather than flitted through its lake of beams. I gazed after her in a kind of despair. Found. Freed. Lost. It seemed useless to follow, yet follow I must. I marked the direction she took, and without once looking round to the forsaken cave I hastened towards the forest. CHAPTER VI Let a man beware when his wishes fulfilled rain down upon him, and his happiness is unbounded. Thy red lips, like worms, travel over my cheek. MOTHERWELL But as I crossed the space between the foot of the hill and the forest, a vision of another kind delayed my steps. Through an opening to the westward flowed, like a stream, the rays of the setting sun and overflowed with a ruddy splendor the open space where I was, and riding, as it were, down this stream towards me came a horseman in what appeared red armor. From front lit to tail the horse likewise shone red in the sunset. I felt as if I must have seen the night before. But as he drew near, I could recall no feature of his countenance. Airy came up to me, however, I remembered the legend of Sir Percival and the rusty armor which I had left unfinished in the old book in the cottage. It was of Sir Percival that he reminded me. And no wonder, for when he came close up to me, I saw that from the crest to heel the whole surface of his armor was covered with a light rust. The golden spurs shone but the iron greaves glowed in the sunlight. The morning star which hung from his wrist glittered and glowed with its silver and bronze. His whole appearance was terrible. But his face did not answer to this appearance. It was sad, even to gloominess, and something of shame seemed to cover it. Yet it was noble and high, though thus be clouded, and the form looked lofty, although the head drooped and the whole frame was bowed as with an inward grief. The horse seemed to share in his master's dejection and walked spiritless and slow. I noticed, too, that the white plume on his helmet was discolored and drooping. He has fallen and adjust with spears, I said to myself, yet it becomes not a noble knight to be conquered in spirit because his body had fallen. He appeared not to observe me, for he was riding past without looking up, and started into a warlike attitude the moment the first sound of my voice reached him. And a flush, as of shame, covered all his face that the lifted beaver disclosed. He returned my greeting with distant courtesy and passed on. But suddenly he reigned up, sat a moment still, and then turning his horse rode back to where I stood looking after him. I am ashamed, he said, to appear a knight and in such a guise, but it behooves me to tell you to take warning from me lest the same evil in his kind overtake the singer that has befallen the knight. lest thou ever read the story of Sir Percival and the—here he shuddered that his armour rang. Maiden of the alder tree? In part I have, said I, for yesterday at the entrance of this forest I found in a cottage the volume wherein it is recorded. Then take heed, he rejoined, for see my armour I put it off, and as it befell to him so has it befallen to me. I that was proud am humble now, yet is she terribly beautiful? Beware. Never, he added, raising his head, shall this armour be furbished but by the blows of nightly encounter until the last speck has disappeared from every spot where the battle-axe and sword of evildoers or noble foes might fall. When I shall again lift my head and say to my squire, do thy duty once more and make this armour shine. Before I could inquire further he had struck spurs into his horse and galloped away, shrouded from my voice in the noise of his armour. For I called after him, anxious to know more about this fearful enchantress. But in vain he heard me not. Yet, said I to myself, I have now been often warned, surely I shall be well in my guard, and I am fully resolved I shall not be ensnared by any beauty, however beautiful. Doubtless some one man may escape, and I shall be he. So I went on into the wood, still hoping to find, in some one of its mysterious recesses, my lost lady of the marble. The sunny afternoon died into the loveliest twilight. Great bats began to flit about with their own noiseless flight, seemingly purposeless, because its objects are unseen. The monotonous music of the owl issued from all unexpected quarters in the half-darkness around me. The glow-worm was alight here and there, burning out into that great universe. The night-hawk heightened all the harmony and stillness with his off-recurring, discordant jar. Numberless unknown sounds came out of the unknown dusk. But all were of twilight kind, oppressing the heart as with a condensed atmosphere of dreamy, undefined love and longing. The odours of night arose, and bathed me in that luxurious mournfulness peculiar to them, as if the plants, once they floated, had been watered with bygone tears. Earth drew me towards her bosom. I felt as if I could fall down and kiss her. I forgot I was in fairyland and seemed to be walking in a perfect night of our own nursing earth. Great stems rose about me, of blifting a thick, multudinous roof above me of branches and twigs and leaves. The bird and insect world uplifted over mine with its own landscapes, its own thickets and paths and glazes and dwellings, its own birdways and insect delights. Great boughs crossed my path, great roots based the tree columns, and mightily clasp the earth, strong to lift and strong to uphold. It seemed an old, old forest, perfect in forest ways and pleasures. And when in the midst of this ecstasy I remembered that under some close canopy of leaves, by some giant stem, or in some mossy cave, or beside some leafy well, sat the lady of the marble, whom my songs had called forth into the outer world, waiting, might it not be, to meet and thank her deliverer in a twilight which would veil her confusion, the whole night became one dream-rum of joy, the central form of which was everywhere present, although unbeheld. Then remembering how my song seemed to have called her from the marble, piercing through the pearly shroud of alabaster, why, thought I, should not my voice reach her now, through the ebony night that enraps her? My voice burst into song so spontaneously that it seemed involuntarily. Not a sound, but echoing in me, vibrates all around with a blind delight, till it breaks on thee, queen of night. Every tree, or shadowing with gloom, seems to cover these secret, dark, love still, in a holy room, silence filled. Let no moon creep up the heaven to-night, I, in dark some noon, walking hopefully, seek my shrouded light, grope for thee. Her grow the borders of the dark, through the branches glow, from the roof above, star and diamond sparks, light for love. Scarcely had the last sounds floated away from the hearing of my own ears when I heard instead a low, delicious laugh near me. It was not the laugh of one who would not be heard, but the laugh of one who has just received something long and patiently desired. A laugh that ends in a low musical moan. I started, and turning sideways, saw a dim white figure seated beside an intertwining thicket of smaller trees and underwood. It is my white lady, I said, and flung myself on the ground beside her, striving through the gathering darkness to get a glimpse of the form which had broken its marble prism at my call. It is your white lady, said the sweetest voice, in reply, sending a thrill of speechless delight through a heart which all the love charms of the preceding day and evening had been tempering for this culminating hour. Yet if I would have confessed it there was something either in the sound of the voice, although it seems sweetness itself, or else in this yielding which awaited no gradation of gentle approaches that did not vibrate harmoniously with the beat of my inward music. And likewise when, taking her hand in mine, I drew closer to her, looking for the beauty of her face which, indeed, I found too plentiously a cold shiver ran through me. But it is the marble, I said to myself, and he did it not. She withdrew her hand from mine, and after that would scarce allow me to touch her. It seemed strange, after the fullness of her first greeting, that she could not trust me to come close to her, though her words were those of a lover she kept herself withdrawn as if a mile of space interposed between us. Why did you run away from me when you awoke in the cave, I said? Did I? she returned. That was very unkind of me, but I did not know better. I wish I could see you. The night is very dark. So it is. Come to my grotto. There was light there. Have you another cave, then? Come and see. But she did not move until I rose first, and then she was on her feet before I could offer my hand to help her. She came close to my side and conducted me through the wood. But once or twice, when involuntarily almost, I was about to put my arm around her as we walked on through the warm gloom. She sprang away several paces, always keeping her face full towards me, and then stood looking at me, slightly stooping, in the attitude of one who fears some half-seen enemy. It was too dark to discern the expression of her face. Then she would return and walk close beside me again as if nothing had happened. I thought this strange, but, besides that I had almost, as I said before, given up the attempt to account for appearances in fairy land, I judged that it would be very unfair to expect from one who had slept so long and had been so suddenly awakened, a behavior correspondent to what I might unreflectingly look for. I knew not what she might have been dreaming about. Besides, it was possible that, while her words were free, her sense of touch might be exquisitely delicate. At length, after walking a long way in the woods, we arrived at another thicket, through the intertexture of which was glimmering a pale, rosy light. "'Push aside the branches,' she said, and make room for us to enter. I did, as she told me. "'Go in,' she said. "'I will follow you.' I did, as she desired, and found myself in a little cave not very unlike the marble cave. It was festooned and draperied with all kinds of green that cling to shady rocks. In the furthest corner, half-hidden leaves, through which it glowed, mingling lovely shadows between them, burned a bright rosy flame on a little earthen lamp. The lady glided round by the wall from behind me, still keeping her face towards me, and seated herself in the furthest corner, with her back to the lamp, which she hid completely from my view. I then saw indeed a form of perfect loveliness before me. Almost it seemed as if the light of the rose lamp shone through her, for it could not be reflected from her. Such a delicate shade of pink seemed to shadow what in itself must be a marbly whiteness of hue. I discovered afterwards, however, that there was one thing in it I did not like, which was that the white part of the eye was tinged with the same slight rosy at hue as the rest of the form. It is strange that I cannot recall her features. But they, as well as her somewhat girlish figure, left on me simply and only the impression of intense loveliness. I lay down at her feet and gazed up into her face as I lay. She began, and told me a strange tale which, likewise, I cannot recollect, but which, at every turn and every pause, somehow or other fixed my eyes and thoughts upon her extreme beauty, seeming always to culminate in something that had a relation, revealed or hidden, but always operative, with her own loveliness. I lay entranced. It was a tale which brings back a feeling as of snows and tempests, torrents and water-sprites, lovers parted for long and meeting at last, with a gorgeous summer night to close up the whole. I listened till she and I were blended with the tale, till she and I were the whole history, and we had met at last in the same cave of greenery while the summer night hung round us heavy with love, and the odours that crept through the silence from the sleeping woods were the only signs of an outer world that invaded our solitude. What followed I cannot clearly remember. The succeeding horror almost obliterated it. I woke as a grey dawn stole into the cave. The damsel had disappeared, but in the shrubbery at the mouth of the cave stood a strange, horrible object. It looked like an open coffin set up on one end, only that the part for the head and neck was defined from the shoulder part. In fact it was a rough representation of the human frame, only hollow, as if made of decaying bark, torn from a tree. It had arms, which were only slightly seamed down from the shoulder, blade by the elbow, as if the bark had healed again from the cut of a knife. But the arms moved, and the hand and the fingers were tearing us under a long, silky tress of hair. The thing turned round. It had for a face and front those of my enchantress, but now of a pale greenish hue in the light of the morning and with dead lusterless eyes. In the horror of the moment another fear invaded me. I put my hand to my waist and found indeed that my girdle of beach-leaves was gone. Hair again in her hands she was tearing it fiercely. Once more as she turned she laughed a low laugh, but now full of scorn and derision, and then she said, as if to a companion with whom she had been talking while I slept. There he is. You can take him now. I lay still, petrified with dismay and fear, for I now saw another figure beside her, which, although vague and indistinct, I yet recognized but too well. It was the ash tree. My beauty was the maid of the alder, and she was giving me, spoiled of my only availing defense, into the hands of my awful foe. The ash-bent has gorgon head and entered the cave. I could not stir. He drew near me. His ghoul eyes and his ghastly face fascinated me. He came stooping with the hideous hand outstretched like a beast of prey. I had given myself up to a death of unfathomable horror when, suddenly, and just as he was on the point of seizing me, the dull, heavy blow of an axe echoed through the wood, followed by others in quick repetition. The ash-shuttered and groaned, withdrew the outstretched hand, retreated backwards to the mouth of the cave, then turned and disappeared amongst the trees. The other walking death looked at me once, with the careless dislike on her beautifully molded features. Then heedless any more to conceal her hollow deformity, turned her frightful back, and likewise vanished amid the green obscurity without. I lay and wept. The maid of the alder tree had befooled me, nearly slain me, in spite of all the warnings I had received from those who knew my danger. CHAPTER VII FIGHT ON, MY MEN, SIR ANGELOUS SAYS. A LITTLE I'M HURT, BUT YET NOT SLAYN. I but lie down and bleed a while, and then I'll rise and fight again. BALLOT OF SIR ANGELOUS BARTON. But I could not remain where I was any longer, though the daylight was hateful to me and the thought of the great, innocent, bold sunrise unendurable. Here there was no well to cool my face, smarting with the bitterness of my own tears, nor would I have washed in the well of that grotto had it flowed clear as the rivers of paradise. I rose and feebly left the sepulchral cave. I took my way I knew not wither, but still towards the sunrise. The birds were singing, but not for me. All the creatures spoke a language of their own, with which I had nothing to do and to which I cared not to find the key any more. I walked listlessly along. What distressed me most, more even than my own folly, was the perplexing question, how can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and her face of dislike, disenchanted of the belief that clung around her, known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous, I felt notwithstanding all this that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity, though not without some gain. Then I began to make surmises as to the mode of my deliverance, and concluded that some hero, wandering in search of adventure, had heard how the forest was infested, and knowing it was useless to attack the evil thing in person, had assailed with his battle-axe the body in which he dwelt, and on which he was dependent for his power of mischief in the wood. Very likely, I thought, the repentant knight, who warned me of the evil which has befallen me, was busy retrieving his lost honour while I was sinking into the same sorrow with himself, and hearing of the dangerous and mysterious being arrived at his tree in time to save me from being dragged to its roots and buried like carrion to nourish him for yet deeper insatiableness. I found afterwards that my conjecture was correct. I wondered how he had fared when his blows recalled the ash himself, and that too I learned afterwards. I walked on the whole day with intervals of rest, but without food, for I could not have eaten had any been offered me, till in the afternoon I seemed to approach the outskirt of the forest, and at length arrived at a farmhouse. An unspeakable joy arose in my heart at beholding in a boat of human beings once more, and I hastened up to the door and knocked. A kind-looking, matronly woman, still handsome, made her appearance, who as soon as she saw me said kindly, Ah, my poor boy, you have come from the wood! Were you in it last night? I should have ill-endured the day before to be called boy. But now the motherly kindness of the word went to my heart, and like a boy indeed I burst into tears. She soothed me right gently, and leading me into a room made me lie down on a settle while she went to find some refreshment. She soon returned with food, but I could not eat. She almost compelled me to swallow some wine when I revived sufficiently to be able to answer some of her question. I told her the whole story. It is just as I feared, she said, but you are now for the night beyond the reach of any of these dreadful creatures. It is no wonder they could dilute a child like you. But I must beg you, when my husband comes in, not to say a word about these things, for he thinks me even half-crazy for believing anything of the sort. But I must believe my senses, as he cannot believe beyond his, which give him no intimations of this kind. I think he could spend the whole of Midsummer Eve in the wood and come back with a report that he saw nothing worse than himself. Indeed, good man, he would hardly find anything better than himself if he had seven more senses given him. But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all, without any place even for her heart to live in. I cannot quite tell, she said, but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty, mistaking her for the lady of the marble—another kind altogether, I should think. But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this, that although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man. And when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love—not for the sake of his love, either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty through the admiration he manifests—makes her very lovely, with a self-destructive beauty, though. For it is that which is constantly wearing her away within, till, at last, the decay will reach her face, and her whole front, and all the lovely mask of nothing will fall to pieces, and she be vanished forever. So a wise man whom she met in the woods some years ago, and who, I think, for all his wisdom, fared no better than you, told me, when, like you, he spent the next night here, and recounted to me his adventures. I thanked her warmly for her solution, though it was but partial. Wondering much that in her, as in the woman I met on my first entering the forest, there should be such superiority to her apparent condition. Here she left me to take some rest, though, indeed, I was too much agitated to rest in any other way than by simply ceasing to move. In half an hour I heard a heavy step approach and enter the house. A jolly voice, whose slight huskiness appeared to proceed from over much laughter, called out, "'Betsy, the pig's trough is quite empty, and that is a pity. Let them swill, lass. There of no use but to get fat. Ha, ha, ha!' The very voice, kind and jovial, seemed to disrobe the room of the strange look which all new places wear, to disenchant it out of the realm of the ideal into that of the actual. It began to look as if I had known every corner of it for twenty years, and when, soon after, the dame came and fetched me to partake of their early supper, the grasp of his great hand and the harvest-moon of his benevolent face, which was needed to light up the rotentity of the globe beneath it, produced such a reaction in me that, for a moment, I could hardly believe that there was a fairy-land, and that all I had passed through since I left home had not been the wandering dream of a diseased imagination, operating on a two mobile frame not merely causing me, indeed, to travel, but peopling for me with vague phantoms the regions through which my actual steps had led me. But the next moment my eye fell upon a little girl who was sitting in the chimney corner, with a little book open on her knee from which she had apparently just looked up to fix great inquiring eyes upon me. I believed in fairy-land again. She went on with her reading as soon as she saw that I observed her looking at me. I went near, and peeping over her shoulder saw that she was reading the history of Graciosa and Personette. Very improving book, sir! remarked the old farmer with a good humoured laugh. We are in the very hottest corner of fairy-land here. Ha-ha! Stormy night last night, sir. Was it indeed, I rejoined? It was not so with me. A lovelier night I never saw. Indeed! Where were you last night? I spent it in the forest. I had lost my way. Ah! Then perhaps you'll be able to convince my good woman that there is nothing very remarkable about the forest. For to tell the truth it bears but a bad name in these parts. I daresay you saw nothing worse than yourself there. I hope I did, was my inward reply, but for an audible one I contented myself with saying, while I certainly did see some appearances I could hardly account for, but that is nothing to be wondered at in an unknown wild forest and with the uncertain light of the moon alone to go by. Very true! you speak like a sensible man, sir. We have but few sensible folks around about us. Now you would hardly credit it, but my wife believes every fairy tale that ever was written. I cannot account for it. She is the most sensible woman in everything else. But should not that make you treat her belief with something of respect, though you cannot share it in yourself? Yes, that is all very well in theory. But when you come to live every day in the midst of absurdity, it is far less easy to behave respectfully to it. Why, my wife actually believes the story of the white cat. You know what I daresay. I read all these tales when a child, and know that one especially well. Father, interposed the little girl in the chimney corner, you know quite well that mother has descended from that very princess who was changed by the wicked fairy into a white cat. Mother has told me so many times, and you ought to believe everything she says. I can easily believe that, rejoined the farmer with another fit of laughter. For the other night a mouse came gnawing and scratching beneath the floor, and would not let us go to sleep. Your mother sprang out of bed, and going as near as she could, mued so infernally like a great cat that the noise ceased instantly. I believe the poor mouse died of the fright, for we have never heard it again. The son, an ill-looking youth who had entered during the conversation, joined in his father's laugh, but his laugh was very different from the old man's. It was polluted with a sneer. I watched him and saw that as soon as it was over he looked scared as if he dreaded some evil consequences to follow his presumption. The woman stood near, waiting till we should seat ourselves at the table, and listening to it all with an amused air, which had something in it of the look with which one listens to the sententious remarks of a pompous child. We sat down to supper, and I ate heartily. My bygone distresses begin already to look far off. What direction are you going? asked the old man. Eastward, I replied, nor could I have given a more definite answer. Does the forest extend much further in that direction? Oh, for miles and miles I do not know how far. For although I have lived on the borders of it all my life, I have been too busy to make my journeys of discovery into it. Nor do I see what I could discover. It is only trees and trees to want to sick of them. By the way, if you follow the eastward track from here, you will pass close to what the children say is the very house of the ogre that hop on my thumb visited, and ate his little daughters with the crowns of gold. Oh, father, ate his little daughters? No, he only changed their gold crowns for nightcaps. And the great long-toothed ogre killed them in mistake. But I do not think even he ate them, for you know they were his own little ogresses. Well, well, child, you know all about it a great deal better than I do. However, the house has, of course, in such a foolish neighborhood as this, a bad enough name. And I must confess, there is a woman living in it with teeth long enough and wide enough too for the lineal descendant of the greatest ogre that ever was made. I think you had better not go nearer. In such talk as this the night wore on. When supper was finished, which lasted some time, my hostess conducted me to my chamber. If you had not had enough of it already, she said, I would have put you in another room which looks toward the forest, and where you would most likely have seen something more of its inhabitants, for they frequently pass the window and even enter the room sometimes. Strange creatures spend whole nights in it at certain seasons of the year. I am used to it, and do not mind it. No more does my little girl who sleeps in it always. But this room looks southward toward the open country, and they never show themselves here. At least I never saw any. I was somewhat sorry not to gather any experience that I might have of the inhabitants of Fairyland, but the effect of the farmer's company and of my own later adventures was such that I chose rather an undisturbed night in my more human quarters, which with their clean white curtains and white linen were very inviting to my weariness. In the morning I awoke refreshed, after a profound and dreamless sleep. The sun was high when I looked out of the window, shining over a wide undulating, cultivated tree. Various garden vegetables were growing beneath my window. Everything was radiant with the clear sunlight. The dew drops were sparkling their busiest. The cows in a nearby field were eating as if they had not been at it all day yesterday. The maids were singing at their work as they passed to and fro between the outhouses. I did not believe in Fairyland. I went down and found the family already at breakfast. But before I entered the room where they sat, the little girl came to me and looked up in my face as though she wanted to say something to me. I stooped towards her. She put her arms round my neck and her mouth to my ear and whispered, A white lady has been flitting about the house all night. No whispering behind closed doors, cried the farmer, and we entered together. Well, how have you slept? No bogies, eh? Not one, thank you. I slept uncommonly well. I'm glad to hear it. Come and breakfast. After breakfast the farmer and his son went out and I was left alone with the mother and daughter. When I looked out of the window this morning, I said, I felt almost certain that Fairyland was all a delusion of my brain. But whenever I came near you or your little daughter I feel differently. Yet I could not persuade myself after my last adventures to go back and have nothing more to do with such strange beings. How will you go back? said the woman. Nay, that I do not know. Because I have heard that for those who enter Fairyland there is no way of going back. They must go on and go through it. How I do not in the least know. That is quite the impression on my own mind. Something compels me to go on as if my only path was onward, but I feel less inclined this morning to continue my adventures. Will you come and see my little child's room? She sleeps in the one I told you of looking towards the forest. Willingly, I said. So we went together, the little girl running before to open the door for us. It was a large room full of old-fashioned furniture that seemed to have once belonged to some great house. The window was built with a low arch and filled with lozen-shaped panes. The wall was very thick and built of solid stone. I could see that part of the house had been erected against the remains of some old castle or abbey or other great building, the fallen stones of which had probably served to complete it. But as soon as I looked out of the window a gush of wondermen and longing flowed over my soul like the tide of a great sea. Fairyland lay before me and drew me towards it with an irresistible attraction. The trees bade their great heads in the waves of the morning while their roots were planted deep in the gloom. Save were on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed. Revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen pine cones and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light. I turned hurriedly to bid my hostess farewell without further delay. She smiled at my haste but with an anxious look. You had better not go near the house of the ogre, I think. My son will show you into another path, which will join the first beyond it. Not wishing to be headstrong or too confident any more, I agreed, and having taken leave of my kind entertainers went into the wood, accompanied by the youth. He scarcely spoke as we went along, but he led me through the trees till we struck upon a path. He told me to follow it, and with a muttered, good morning. He left me. CHAPTER VIII. I AM A PART OF THE PART, WHICH AT FIRST WAS THE WHOLE. GOATH. MY PHYSTOPHOLIES AND FOUST. My spirits rose as I went deeper into the forest, but I could not regain my former elasticity of mind. I found cheerfulness to be like life itself, not to be created by any argument. Afterwards I learned that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts is to dare them to do their worst, to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired, and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill. So better and worse I went on till I came to a little clearing in the forest. In the middle of this clearing stood a long, low hut, built with one end against a single tall cypress which rose like a spire to the building. A vague misgiving crossed my mind when I saw it, but I must needs go closer and look through a little half-open door near the opposite end from the cypress. Window I saw none. On peeping in and looking towards the further end I saw a lamp burning with a dim reddish flame in the head of a woman bent downwards as if reading by its light. I could see nothing more for a few moments. At length, as my eyes got used to the dimness of the place, I saw that the part of the rude building near me was used for household purposes, for several rough utensils lay here and there and a bed stood in the corner. An irresistible attraction caused me to enter. The woman never raised her face, the upper part of which alone I could see distinctly. But as soon as I stepped within the threshold she began to read aloud in a low and not altogether unpleasing voice from an ancient little volume which she held open with one hand on the table upon which stood the lamp. What she read was something like this. So then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever have an end. So then is it eternal. The negation of odd else is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come there abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a mind out of the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness. Yea, springeth in fountains and wells amidst it from the secret channels of its mighty sea. Truly man is but a passing flame, moving unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night, without which he could not be and whereof he is in part compounded. As I drew nearer and she read on she moved a little to turn a leaf of the dark old volume and I saw that her face was sallow and slightly forbidding. Her forehead was high and her black eyes were pressedly quiet. But she took no notice of me. This end of the cottage, if cottage it could be called, was destitute of furniture except a table with the lamp and the chair in which the woman sat. In one corner was a door apparently of a cupboard in the wall but which might lead to a room beyond. Still the irresistible desire which had made me enter the building urged me. I must open that door and see what was beyond it. I approached and laid my hand on the rude latch. Then the woman spoke but without lifting her head or looking at me. You had better not open that door. This was uttered quite quietly and she went on with her reading, partly in silence, partly aloud, but both modes seemed equally intended for herself alone. The prohibition, however, opened the increase my desire to see and as she took no further notice I gently opened the door to its full width and looked in. At first I saw nothing worthy of attention. It seemed a common closet, with shelves on each hand on which stood various little necessities for the humble uses of a cottage. In one corner stood one or two brooms, in another a hatchet and other common tools, showing that it was in use every hour of the day for household purposes. But, as I looked, I saw that there were no shelves at the back and that an empty space went in further. Its termination appearing to be a faintly glimmering wall or curtain, somewhat less, however, than the width and height of the doorway where I stood. But, as I continued looking for a few seconds toward this faintly luminous limit, my eyes came into true relation with their object. All at once with such a shiver as when one is suddenly conscious of the presence of another in a room where he has, for hours, considered himself alone, I saw that the seemingly luminous extremity was a sky, as of night, beheld through the long perspective of a narrow, dark passage, through what, or built of what, I could not tell. As I gazed, I clearly discerned two or three stars glimmering faintly in the distant blue. But suddenly, and as if it had been running fast from a far distance for this very point, and had turned the corner without abating its swiftness, a dark figure sped into and along the passage from the blue opening at the remote end, I started back, and shuttered, but kept looking for I could not help it. On and on it came with a speedy approach but delayed arrival, till, at last, through the many gradations of approach, it seemed to come within the sphere of myself, rushed up to me, and passed me into the cottage. All I could tell of its appearance was that it seemed to be a dark human figure. Its motion was entirely noiseless and might be called a gliding where it not that it appeared that of a runner, but with ghostly feet. I had moved back yet a little to let him pass me, and looked round after him instantly. I could not see him. Where is he? I said, in some alarm to the woman who still sat reading. There, on the floor, behind you, she said, pointing with her arm half outstretched but not lifting her eyes. I turned and looked but saw nothing. Then, with a feeling that there was yet something behind me, I looked round over my shoulder, and there, on the ground, lay a black shadow the size of a man. It was so dark that I could see it in the dim light of the lamp, which shone full upon it, apparently without thinning at all the intensity of its hue. I told you, said the woman, you had better not look into that closet. What is it? I said, with a growing sense of horror. It is only your shadow that has found you, she replied. Everybody's shadow was ranging up and down looking for him. I believe you call it by a different name in your world. Yours is found you, as every person's is almost certain to do who looks into that closet, especially after meeting one in the forest, whom I dare say you have met. Here, for the first time, she lifted her head and looked full at me. Her mouth was full of long, white, shining teeth, and I knew that I was in the house of the ogre. I could not speak, but turned and left the house with a shadow at my heels. A nice sort of valet to have. I said to myself bitterly as I stepped into the sunshine and, looking over my shoulder, saw that it lay yet blacker in the full blaze of the sunlight. Indeed, only when I stood between it and the sun was the blackness at all diminished. I was so bewildered, stunned, both by the event itself and its suddenness, that I could not at all realize to myself what it would be to have such a constant and strange attendance. But with a dim conviction that my present dislike would soon grow to loathing, I took my dreary way through the wood.