sport with the precious metals, and with irritating malice blew gold-
dust in one another's eyes. My odious companion ordered the others
to reach him up a vast quantity of gold; this he showed to me with a
laugh, and then flung it again ringing and chinking down the
measureless abyss.

"After this contemptuous disregard of gold, he held up the piece I
had given him, showing it to his brother goblins below, and they
laughed immoderately at a coin so worthless, and hissed me. At last,
raising their fingers all smutched with ore, they pointed them at me
in scorn; and wilder and wilder, and thicker and thicker, and madder
and madder, the crowd were clambering up to where I sat gazing at
these wonders. Then terror seized me, as it had before seized my
horse. I drove my spurs into his sides, and how far he rushed with
me through the forest, during this second of my wild heats, it is
impossible to say.

"At last, when I had now come to a dead halt again, the cool of
evening was around me. I caught the gleam of a white footpath
through the branches of the trees; and presuming it would lead me out
of the forest toward the city, I was desirous of working my way into
it. But a face, perfectly white and indistinct, with features ever
changing, kept thrusting itself out and peering at me between the
leaves. I tried to avoid it, but wherever I went, there too appeared
the unearthly face. I was maddened with rage at this interruption,
and determined to drive my steed at the appearance full tilt, when
such a cloud of white foam came rushing upon me and my horse, that we
were almost blinded and glad to turn about and escape. Thus from
step to step it forced us on, and ever aside from the footpath,
leaving us for the most part only one direction open. When we