broke into song, and far and near their voices echoed above the elfin
din of timbrel and fife and hunting-horn. I began to wish the moon
away that dazzled my eyes, yet could not muffle my ears.

In the heavy-laden boughs dim lanterns burned. There, indeed, when we
dipped into the deeper umbrage of some loftier tree, I espied the
pattering hosts--creatures my Dianeme might have threaded for a
bangle, yet breeched and armed and fiercely martial.

Down, too, in a watery dell of harts-tongue, around the root of a
swelling fungus, a lovely company floated of an insubstantiality
subtile as taper-smoke, and of a beauty as remote as the babes in
children's eyes.

We passed unheeded. Four bearded hoofs rose and fell upon the moss
with all the circumspection snorting Rosinante could compass. But one
might as well go snaring moonbeams as dream to crush such airy beings.
Ever and again a gossamer company would soar like a spider on his
magic thread, and float with a whisper of remotest music past my ear;
or some bolder pigmy, out of the leaves we brushed in passing, skip
suddenly across the rusty amphitheatre of my saddle into the further
covert.

So we wandered on, baffled and confused, through a hundred pathless
glens and dells till already gold had begun to dim the swelling moon's
bright silver, and by the freshness and added sweetness of the air it
seemed dawn must be near, when, on a sudden, a harsh, preposterous
voice broke on my ear, and such a see-saw peal of laughter as I have
never tittered in sheer fellowship with before, or since. We stood
listening, and the voice broke out again.