youth of the race--back in the beguilement of the young world.
Everything is in this hour--the beauty of classic myths, the
primal charm of the silent and the open, the lure of mystery.
Why, it's a time and place when and where everything might come
true--when the men in green might creep out to join hands and
dance around the fire, or dryads steal from their trees to warm
their white limbs, grown chilly in October frosts, by the blaze.
I wouldn't be much surprised if we should see something of the
kind. Isn't that the flash of an ivory shoulder through yonder
gloom? And didn't you see a queer little elfin face peering at us
around that twisted gray trunk? But one can't be sure. Mortal
eyesight is too slow and clumsy a thing to match against the
flicker of a pixy-litten fire."

Hand in hand we wandered through that enchanted place, seeking the
folk of elf-land, "and heard their mystic voices calling, from
fairy knoll and haunted hill." Not till the fire died down into
ashes did we leave the grove. Then we found that the full moon
was gleaming lustrously from a cloudless sky across the valley.
Between us and her stretched up a tall pine, wondrously straight
and slender and branchless to its very top, where it overflowed in
a crest of dark boughs against the silvery splendour behind it.
Beyond, the hill farms were lying in a suave, white radiance.

"Doesn't it seem a long, long time to you since we left home this
afternoon?" asked the Story Girl. "And yet it is only a few hours."

Only a few hours--true; yet such hours were worth a cycle of
common years untouched by the glory and the dream.