time I dropped a piece of gold into his wizard cap, which he had
taken from his head while he was begging before me.

"I then trotted off and left him, but he screamed after me; and on a
sudden, with inconceivable quickness, he was close by my side. I
started my horse into a gallop. He galloped on with me, though it
seemed with great difficulty, and with a strange movement, half
ludicrous and half horrible, forcing at the same time every limb and
feature into distortion, he held up the gold piece and screamed at
every leap, 'Counterfeit! false! false coin! counterfeit!' and such
was the strange sound that issued from his hollow breast, you would
have supposed that at every scream he must have tumbled upon the
ground dead. All this while his disgusting red tongue hung lolling
from his mouth.

"I stopped bewildered, and asked, 'What do you mean by this
screaming? Take another piece of gold, take two, but leave me.'

"He then began again his hideous salutations of courtesy, and snarled
out as before, 'Not gold, it shall not be gold, my young gentleman.
I have too much of that trash already, as I will show you in no
time.'

"At that moment, and thought itself could not have been more
instantaneous, I seemed to have acquired new powers of sight. I
could see through the solid green plain, as if it were green glass,
and the smooth surface of the earth were round as a globe, and within
it I saw crowds of goblins, who were pursuing their pastime and
making themselves merry with silver and gold. They were tumbling and
rolling about, heads up and heads down; they pelted one another in