her near you at night." All this was uttered without pause or
alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly and left me,
walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not
conjecture what she meant, but satisfied myself with thinking
that it would be time enough to find out her meaning when there
was need to make use of her warning, and that the occasion would
reveal the admonition. I concluded from the flowers that she
carried, that the forest could not be everywhere so dense as it
appeared from where I was now walking; and I was right in this
conclusion. For soon I came to a more open part, and by-and-by
crossed a wide grassy glade, on which were several circles of
brighter green. But even here I was struck with the utter
stillness. No bird sang. No insect hummed. Not a living
creature crossed my way. Yet somehow the whole environment
seemed only asleep, and to wear even in sleep an air of
expectation. The trees seemed all to have an expression of
conscious mystery, as if they said to themselves, "we could, an'
if we would." They had all a meaning look about them. Then I
remembered that night is the fairies' day, and the moon their
sun; and I thought--Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the
night comes, it will be different. At the same time I, being a
man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should
fare among the elves and other children of the night who wake
when mortals dream, and find their common life in those wondrous
hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of
men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the
weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat them
down, and hold them drowned and senseless, until the ebbtide
comes, and the waves sink away, back into the ocean of the dark.
But I took courage and went on. Soon, however, I became again