nd down his boots, and stared at him with
looks full of curiosity.

"Who are you, little boy, and where do you come from?" they seemed to
be saying; and as they spoke all together their voices sounded exactly
like the wind as we hear it in the pine trees. They were so gentle and
kind-looking that Martin was not a bit afraid and asked them at once to
tell him the way to the Wonderful Toymaker who makes all the toys for
Fairyland. They were delighted to tell him all they knew, for it was
their one secret and they were very proud of it; and so few people ever
came that way that they had very few opportunities of telling it. So
their honest little brown faces were covered with good-nature and
smiles, as they crooned out their information.

"You must walk straight through the wood," they said, "until you come
to a waterfall at the beginning of a stream; and you must follow the
stream down, down, down, until it brings you to a valley surrounded by
high hills; and in that valley is the toyshop of the Wonderful
Toymaker, who makes all the toys for Fairyland."

"That is simple enough, I 'm sure," said Martin.

"Ah," said the pine dwarfs, wisely, "but it is not so easy to get there
as you think; for the stream leads you through the country of the
people who make conversation, and they try to stop every stranger who
passes by, so that they can make him into conversation; and that is why
so few people ever reach the Wonderful Toymaker at all."

"Make conversation! How funny!" said Martin; and he almost laughed
aloud at the idea.

"It is more sad than funny," said the pine dwarfs, sighing like a large
gust of wind that for the moment made Martin feel quite chilly; "for it
gives _us_ so much to do. You see, they make conversation, and we make
silence; and the more conversation they make the more silence we have
to make to keep things even. They are always ahead of us, for all
that!" They sighed again. Martin looked puzzled.

"Still, your silence is so full of sound," he said. The pine dwarfs
laughed softly, so softly that most people would have called it only
smiling.

"Real silence, the best kind, is always full of sound; and of course we
only make the very best kind," they explained proudly. "Anybody can
make the other kind of silence by taking the air and sifting out the
noise in it. Now, _we_ take the air, and when we have sifted out the
noise we fill it with sound. That's a very different thing. The worst