as imaged trees seem to dance on running
water....

On one side was Ireland, and _on one_ side was Scotland, and high in the
air between them was Dancing Town....

No one was in the streets that wee Shane could see, and yet the town was
lifeful, some tropical city where the green jalousies were closed in the
heat of the midday sun, and where no one was on the streets, barring
some unseen old beggar or peddling woman drowsing in the shade. The town
was sleeping not with the sleep of Scotland, that is the sleep of dead
majestic, melancholy kings, nor with the sleep of Ireland, that is
tired and harassed and old. It was not as lonely as sleeping lakes are
where the bittern booms like a drum.... It slept as a child sleeps, lips
apart and chubby fingers uncurled, and happy.... And all the time it
quivered in the clear air....

In the morning, wee Shane thought, it woke to bright happiness, the
green parrakeets chattered, the monkeys whistled, the lizards basked in
the sun. And the generation of the town came out and gossiped and worked
merrily, until the heat of the sun began to strike with the strokes of a
mallet, and then they went into the cool, dark houses and slept as
children sleep. And then came blue twilight, and lamps were lit in the
green spaces, and into the odorous night would come the golden rounded
women with smiles like honey, and the graceful feline men.... A woman's
laughter, a man's song.... And the moon rising on tropic seas, while a
guitar hummed with a deep vibrant note.... And the perfume of strange
tropic trees....

But meantime the town danced in the clear air.... And--

"It's gone!" said wee Shane.

One moment it was there, and the next there were only Ireland and
Scotland and the waters of Moyle, and a ship going drowsily for the
Clyde.

And for a long time he waited, thinking Dancing Town might come again.
But it did not come. The schooner off the Mull lay over, and the Moyle
awoke. A breeze rambled up the mountain, and the heather tinkled its
strange dry tinkle. And afar off a curlew called, and a grouse crowed in
defiance.

The moment of magic was by, and wee Shane went down the mountain.

Section 7

As he went down the mountain he tried to puzzle out the why and
wherefore of Dancing Town.

Of course there were things you could not explain, like the banshee; or
the Naked Hangman, who strides through the valleys on midsummer's eve
with his gallows under his arm; or the Death Coac