go all alone?"...

"Not very far, my Children," said Light. "Over there to the Land of
the Silence of Things."

"No, no," said Tyltyl. "I won't have you go...."

But Light quieted them with a motherly gesture and said words to them
which they never forgot. Long after, when they were a grandfather and
grandmother in their turn, Tyltyl and Mytyl still remembered them and
used to repeat them to their grandchildren.

Here are Light's touching words:

"Listen, Tyltyl. Do not forget, child, that everything that you see in
this world has neither beginning nor end. If you keep this thought in
your heart and let it grow up with you, you will always, in all
circumstances, know what to say, what to do and what to hope for."

And, when our two friends began to sob, she added, lovingly:

"Do not cry, my dear little ones.... I have not a voice like Water; I
have only my brightness, which Man does not understand.... But I watch
over him to the end of his days.... Never forget that I am speaking to
you in every spreading moonbeam, in every twinkling star, in every
dawn that rises, in every lamp that is lit, in every good and bright
thought of your soul...."

At that moment, the grandfather's clock in the cottage struck eight
o'clock. Light stopped for a moment and then, in a voice that grew
suddenly fainter, whispered:

"Good-bye!... Good-bye!... The hour is striking!... Good-bye!"

Her veil faded away, her smile became paler, her eyes closed, her form
vanished and, through their tears, the children saw nothing but a thin
ray of light dying away at their feet. Then they turned to the others
... but these had disappeared....

CHAPTER X

THE AWAKENING

The grandfather's clock in Tyl the woodcutter's cottage had struck
eight; and his two little Children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, were still
asleep in their little beds. Mummy Tyl stood looking at them, with her
arms akimbo and her apron tucked up, laughing and scolding in the same
breath:

"I can't let them go on sleeping till mid-day," she said. "Come, get
up, you little lazybones!"

But it was no use shaking them, kissing them or pulling the
bed-clothes off them: they kept on falling back upon their pillows,
with their noses pointing at the ceiling, their mouths wide open,
their eyes shut and their cheeks all pink.

At last, after receiving a gentle thump in the ribs, Tyltyl opened one
eye and murmured:

"What?... Light?... Where are you?... No, no, don't go away