the night was passed, without sitting down to rest, and without taking
any food. She did not even remember to put out her torch, and it
looked very pale and small in the bright morning sunshine.

It must have been a magic torch, for it burned dimly all day, and then
when night came it shone with a beautiful red light, and neither the
wind nor the rain put it out through all these weary days while Ceres
sought for Proserpina.

It was not only men and women that Mother Ceres questioned about her
daughter. In the woods and by the streams she met other creatures
whose way of talking she could understand, and who knew many things
that we have never learned.

Sometimes she tapped with her finger against an oak tree, and at once
its rough bark would open and a beautiful maiden would appear: she was
the spirit of the oak, living inside it, and as happy as could be when
its green leaves danced in the breeze.

Then another time Ceres would find a spring bubbling out of a little
hole in the earth, and she would play with her fingers in the water.
Immediately up through the sandy bed a nymph with dripping hair would
rise and float half out of the water, looking at Mother Ceres, and
swaying up and down with the water bubbles.

But when the mother asked whether her poor lost child had stopped to
drink of the fountain, the nymph with weeping eyes would answer
"No," in a murmuring voice which was just like the sound of a running
stream.