happy fields."

After leaving this village, where I had rested for nearly a
week, I travelled through a desert region of dry sand and glittering
rocks, peopled principally by goblin-fairies. When I first entered their
domains, and, indeed, whenever I fell in with another tribe of them,
they began mocking me with offered handfuls of gold and jewels, making
hideous grimaces at me, and performing the most antic homage, as if they
thought I expected reverence, and meant to humour me like a maniac. But
ever, as soon as one cast his eyes on the shadow behind me, he made a
wry face, partly of pity, partly of contempt, and looked ashamed, as
if he had been caught doing something inhuman; then, throwing down his
handful of gold, and ceasing all his grimaces, he stood aside to let me
pass in peace, and made signs to his companions to do the like. I had no
inclination to observe them much, for the shadow was in my heart as well
as at my heels. I walked listlessly and almost hopelessly along, till I
arrived one day at a small spring; which, bursting cool from the heart
of a sun-heated rock, flowed somewhat southwards from the direction I
had been taking. I drank of this spring, and found myself wonderfully
refreshed. A kind of love to the cheerful little stream arose in my
heart. It was born in a desert; but it seemed to say to itself, "I will
flow, and sing, and lave my banks, till I make my desert a paradise."
I thought I could not do better than follow it, and see what it made
of it. So down with the stream I went, over rocky lands, burning with
sunbeams. But the rivulet flowed not far, before a few blades of
grass appeared on its banks, and then, here and there, a stunted bush.
Sometimes it disappeared altogether under ground; and after I had
wandered some distance, as near as I could guess, in the direction it
seemed to take, I would suddenly hear it again, singing, sometimes far
away to my right or left, amongst new rocks, over which it made new
cataracts of watery melodies. The verdure on its banks increased as it
flowed; other streams joined it; and at last, after many days' travel,
I found myself, one gorgeous summer evening, resting by the side of a
broad river, with a glorious horse-chestnut tree towering above me, and
dropping its blossoms, milk-white and rosy-red, all about me. As I sat,
a gush of joy sprang forth in my heart, and over flowed at my eyes.

Through my tears, the whole landscape glimmered in such bewilde