nt wading about as if tangled in it, until the
sun was down, and the sky beginning to grow dark. Then the red roses
turned black, and soon the yellow and white alone were visible. When
they vanished, the stars came instead, hanging in the leaves like
live topazes, throbbing and sparkling and flashing many colours: I was
canopied with a tree from Aladdin's cave!

Then I discovered that it was full of nests, whence tiny heads,
nearly indistinguishable, kept popping out with a chirp or two, and
disappearing again. For a while there were rustlings and stirrings and
little prayers; but as the darkness grew, the small heads became still,
and at last every feathered mother had her brood quiet under her wings,
the talk in the little beds was over, and God's bird-nursery at rest
beneath the waves of sleep. Once more a few flutterings made me look
up: an owl went sailing across. I had only a glimpse of him, but several
times felt the cool wafture of his silent wings. The mother birds did
not move again; they saw that he was looking for mice, not children.

About midnight I came wide awake, roused by a revelry, whose noises
were yet not loud. Neither were they distant; they were close to me, but
attenuate. My eyes were so dazzled, however, that for a while I could
see nothing; at last they came to themselves.

I was lying on my withered leaves in the corner of a splendid hall.
Before me was a crowd of gorgeously dressed men and gracefully robed
women, none of whom seemed to see me. In dance after dance they vaguely
embodied the story of life, its meetings, its passions, its partings. A
student of Shakspere, I had learned something of every dance alluded
to in his plays, and hence partially understood several of those I
now saw--the minuet, the pavin, the hey, the coranto, the lavolta. The
dancers were attired in fashion as ancient as their dances.

A moon had risen while I slept, and was shining through the
countless-windowed roof; but her light was crossed by so many shadows
that at first I could distinguish almost nothing of the faces of
the multitude; I could not fail, however, to perceive that there was
something odd about them: I sat up to see them better.--Heavens! could
I call them faces? They were skull fronts!--hard, gleaming bone, bare
jaws, truncated noses, lipless teeth which could no more take part in
any smile! Of these, some flashed set and white and murderous; others
were clouded with decay, broken and gapped, c