he cheese reposes, unmindful;
they, fierce and heedless with anger, rave against it out of reach and
emit a squeal; a rage for eating, collected from a long fast, and
throats dry from curd, urge them on: not otherwise anger inflamed the
king and princess surveying the walls, and anguish burned in their
bones; by what way they might obtain access; in what manner they might
dislodge the rations shut up in inaccessible places. _Nequicquam!_ They
could only look at each other with a wild surmise, and then, unfriended,
melancholy, slow, betake themselves to the rude shelter and frugal fare
of the barn. Then the scene was suddenly changed. The westering sun came
serenely in. The dreamy mist of graceful cobwebs, festooning and
fantastic, and many a tiny window all adust, softened his brilliancy to
a dim, religious light. The brown old rafters shone, amber-hued, in that
mellow glory. The rough floors were fretted gold. A hundred summer
sunsets glowed in the yellow corn that lay massed in ridged and
burnished splendor. Mounds of apples, ruddy and round, loaded the air
with their rich fragrance. Innumerable clover-blossoms, succulent with
evening dews and morning showers, impurpled in the dusky silence of June
nights, and cut down with all their sweetness in them, treasured up
their dense deliciousness for balm-breathed cows, but did not disdain to
flood our human sphere with tides of pleasant perfume. Meeting and
mingling with these dear home-scents came gales from far Spice Islands
and Araby the Blest, breathing over wild Western seas, to be tangled in
pungent grasses and freight with welcome burden our rustic gondolas. (I
mean English hay and salt hay.) And there, soothed into exceeding peace
by Nature's subtile lullaby, borne into ethereal realms on her clouds of
unseen incense, all through the golden afternoon sat the king and
princess, discoursing dreamily of the time

"when men
With angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient date, nor too light fare;
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Our bodies may at last turn all to spirit."

While ever and anon a squat old hen or an elegant young rooster would
hop up the steps and tread into the rooms, looking curiously at the
unwonted sight, whereat the king would rise from his throne on an old
cider-cask, and make a right royal speech, "Go to! Base
intruder!"--emphasizing his peroration by hurling an ear of corn at his
visito