from overmuch laughter, called out "Betsy, the pigs' trough is
quite empty, and that is a pity. Let them swill, lass! They're
of no use but to get fat. Ha! ha! ha! Gluttony is not forbidden
in their commandments. Ha! ha! ha!" The very voice, kind and
jovial, seemed to disrobe the room of the strange look which all
new places wear--to disenchant it out of the realm of the ideal
into that of the actual. It began to look as if I had known
every corner of it for twenty years; and when, soon after, the
dame came and fetched me to partake of their early supper, the
grasp of his great hand, and the harvest-moon of his benevolent
face, which was needed to light up the rotundity of the globe
beneath it, produced such a reaction in me, that, for a moment, I
could hardly believe that there was a Fairy Land; and that all I
had passed through since I left home, had not been the wandering
dream of a diseased imagination, operating on a too mobile frame,
not merely causing me indeed to travel, but peopling for me with
vague phantoms the regions through which my actual steps had led
me. But the next moment my eye fell upon a little girl who was
sitting in the chimney-corner, with a little book open on her
knee, from which she had apparently just looked up to fix great
inquiring eyes upon me. I believed in Fairy Land again. She
went on with her reading, as soon as she saw that I observed her
looking at me. I went near, and peeping over her shoulder, saw
that she was reading "The History of Graciosa and Percinet."

"Very improving book, sir," remarked the old farmer, with a good-
humoured laugh. "We are in the very hottest corner of Fairy Land
here. Ha! ha! Stormy night, last night, sir."

"Was it, indeed?" I rejoined. "It was not so with me. A