night long to the number of a great multitude, and danced away
together over the marshes.

And I believe that there was a great rejoicing all that night among
the kith of the Elf-folk.




The Highwaymen

Tom o' the Roads had ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the
night. From where he was, a man might see the white recumbent sheep
and the black outline of the lonely downs, and the grey line of the
farther and lonelier downs beyond them; or in hollows far below him,
out of the pitiless wind, he might see the grey smoke of hamlets
arising from black valleys. But all alike was black to the eyes of
Tom, and all the sounds were silence in his ears; only his soul
struggled to slip from the iron chains and to pass southwards into
Paradise. And the wind blew and blew.

For Tom tonight had nought but the wind to ride; they had taken his
true black horse on the day when they took from him the green fields
and the sky, men's voices and the laughter of women, and had left
him alone with chains about his neck to swing in the wind for ever.
And the wind blew and blew.

But the soul of Tom o' the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains, and
whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards into the
iron collar by the wind that blows from Paradise from the south.