began to turn, first gray and then rosy. Then he tumbled down, tired
out, and fell asleep. His head lay on the inner curve of the fairy ring,
with his feet in the centre.

Klaas felt very happy, for he had no sense of being tired, and he did
not know he was asleep. He thought his fairy partners, who had danced
with him, were now waiting on him to bring him cheeses. With a golden
knife, they sliced them off and fed him out of their own hands. How good
it tasted! He thought now he could, and would, eat all the cheese he had
longed for all his life. There was no mother to scold him, or daddy to
shake his finger at him. How delightful!

But by and by, he wanted to stop eating and rest a while. His jaws were
tired. His stomach seemed to be loaded with cannon-balls. He gasped for
breath.

But the fairies would not let him stop, for Dutch fairies never get
tired. Flying out of the sky--from the north, south, east and west--they
came, bringing cheeses. These they dropped down around him, until the
piles of the round masses threatened first to enclose him as with a
wall, and then to overtop him. There were the red balls from Edam, the
pink and yellow spheres from Gouda, and the gray loaf-shaped ones from
Leyden. Down through the vista of sand, in the pine woods, he looked,
and oh, horrors! There were the tallest and strongest of the fairies
rolling along the huge, round, flat cheeses from Friesland! Any one of
these was as big as a cart wheel, and would feed a regiment. The fairies
trundled the heavy discs along, as if they were playing with hoops. They
shouted hilariously, as, with a pine stick, they beat them forward like
boys at play. Farm cheese, factory cheese, Alkmaar cheese, and, to crown
all, cheese from Limburg--which Klaas never could bear, because of its