And it left London far behind it, reddening the sky, and could
distinguish no longer its unlovely roar, but heard again the noises
of the night.

And now it would come through a hamlet glowing and comfortable in
the night; and now to the dark, wet, open fields again; and many an
owl it overtook as they drifted through the night, a people friendly
to the Elf-folk. Sometimes it crossed wide rivers, leaping from star
to star; and, choosing its way as it went, to avoid the hard rough
roads, came before midnight to the East Anglian lands.

And it heard
there the shout of the North Wind, who was dominant and angry, as he
drove southwards his adventurous geese; while the rushes bent before
him chaunting plaintively and low, like enslaved rowers of some
fabulous trireme, bending and swinging under blows of the lash, and
singing all the while a doleful song.

And it felt the good dank air that clothes by night the broad East
Anglian lands, and came again to some old perilous pool where the
soft green mosses grew, and there plunged downward and downward into
the dear dark water till it felt the homely ooze once more coming
up between its toes. Thence, out of the lovely chill that is in the
heart of the ooze, it arose renewed and rejoicing to dance upon the
image of the stars.

I chanced to stand that night by the marsh's edge, forgetting in my
mind the affairs of men; and I saw the marsh-fires come leaping up
from all the perilous places. And they came up by flocks the whole