gambols and the ox chews his cud. Presently the butcher cries, _Time
is!_ Comes the hour and the power, and the cook bestirs herself and
says, _Time was!_ The master has his dinner, either way, all say, and
every day.'

"And the Fairy vanished as she talked with him, her radiances thinning
into the neutral colors of smoke, and thence dwindling a little by a
little into the vaulting spiral of a windless and a burnt-out fire,
until nothing remained of her save her voice; and that was like the
moving of dead leaves before they fall.

"'Truly,' said the Foolish Prince, 'I am compelled to consider this a
vexatious business. For, look you, the butterfly I just now admire
flits over this wicket, and then her twin flutters over that wicket,
and between them there is absolutely no disparity in attraction. Hoo!
here is a more sensible insect.'

"And he leaped and cracked his heels together and ran after a golden
butterfly that drifted to the rearward Fields. There was such a host
of butterflies about that presently he had lost track of his first
choice, and was in boisterous pursuit of a second, and then of a
third, and then of yet others; but none of them did he ever capture,
the while that one by one he followed divers butterflies of varying
colors, and never a golden butterfly did he find any more.

"When it was evening, the sky drew up the twilight from the east as a
blotter draws up ink, and stars were kindling everywhere like tiny
signal-fires, and a light wind came out of the murky east and rustled
very plaintively in places where the more ambiguous shadows were; and
the Foolish Prince shivered, for the air was growing chill, and the