little would they be to me if I ever put them on paper. Let it suffice
that he went down that path going further and further from the fields
we know, and all the way he muttered to himself, "What if the eggs
hatch out and it be a bad business!" The glamour that is at all times
upon those lonely lands that lie at the back of the chalky hills of
Kent intensified as he went upon his journeys. Queerer and queerer
grew the things that he saw by little World-End Path. Many a twilight
descended upon that journey with all their mysteries, many a blaze of
stars; many a morning came flaming up to a tinkle of silvern horns;
till the outpost elves of Fairyland came in sight and the glittering
crests of Fairyland's three mountains betokened the journey's end. And
so with painful steps (for the shores of the world are covered with
huge crystals) he came to the risky seas of Shiroora Shan and saw them
pounding to gravel the wreckage of fallen stars, saw them and heard
their roar, those shipless seas that between earth and the fairies'
homes heave beneath some huge wind that is none of our four. And there
in the darkness on the grizzly coast, for darkness was swooping
slantwise down the sky as though with some evil purpose, there stood
that lonely, gnarled and deciduous tree. It was a bad place to be
found in after dark, and night descended with multitudes of stars,
beasts prowling in the blackness gluttered [See any dictionary, but in
vain.] at Neepy Thang. And there on a lower branch within easy reach
he clearly saw the Bird of the Difficult Eye sitting upon the nest for
which she is famous. Her face was towards those three inscrutable
mountains, far-off on the other side of the risky seas, whose hidden
valleys are Fairyland. Though not yet autumn in the fields we know, it
was close on midwinter here, the moment as Thang knew when those eggs
hatch out. Had he miscalculated and arrived a minute too late? Yet the
bird was even now about to migrate, her pinions fluttered and her gaze
was toward Fairyland. Thang hoped and muttered a prayer to those pagan