strong odor. Soon the cakes and balls were heaped so high around him
that the boy, as he looked up, felt like a frog in a well. He groaned
when he thought the high cheese walls were tottering to fall on him.
Then he screamed, but the fairies thought he was making music. They, not
being human, do not know how a boy feels.

At last, with a thick slice in one hand and a big hunk in the other, he
could eat no more cheese; though the fairies, led by their queen,
standing on one side, or hovering over his head, still urged him to take
more.

At this moment, while afraid that he would burst, Klaas saw the pile of
cheeses, as big as a house, topple over. The heavy mass fell inwards
upon him. With a scream of terror, he thought himself crushed as flat as
a Friesland cheese.

But he wasn't! Waking up and rubbing his eyes, he saw the red sun rising
on the sand-dunes. Birds were singing and the cocks were crowing all
around him, in chorus, as if saluting him. Just then also the village
clock chimed out the hour. He felt his clothes. They were wet with dew.
He sat up to look around. There were no fairies, but in his mouth was a
bunch of grass which he had been chewing lustily.

Klaas never would tell the story of his night with the fairies, nor has
he yet settled the question whether they left him because the
cheese-house of his dream had fallen, or because daylight had come.