you remember?"

She stood quite still, her small, serious face full to the east,
striving with far-off dreams. And a merry little smile passed over her
lips. "That will be a long time since," she said, "and I must be off
home." And as if it had been but an apparition of my eyes that had
beset and deluded me, she was gone; and I found myself sitting astride
in the full brightness of the sun's first beams, alone.

What omen was this, then, that I should meet first a phantom on my
journey? One thing only was clear: Rosinante could trust to her five
wits better than I to mine. So leaving her to take what way she
pleased, I rode on, till at length we approached the woods I had
descried. Presently we were jogging gently down into a deep and misty
valley flanked by bracken and pines, from which issued into the crisp
air of morning a most delicious aromatic smell, that seemed at least
to prove this valley not far remote from Araby.

I do not think I was disturbed, though I confess to having been a
little amazed to see how profound this valley was into which we were
descending, yet how swiftly climbed the sun, as if to pace with us so
that we should not be in shadow, howsoever fast we journeyed. I was
astonished to see flowers of other seasons than summer by the wayside,
and to hear in June, for no other month could bear such green
abundance, the thrush sing with a February voice. Here too, almost at
my right hand, perched a score or more of robins, bright-dyed,
warbling elvishly in chorus as if the may-boughs whereon they sat were
white with hoarfrost and not buds. Birds also unknown to me in voice
and feather I saw, and little creatures in fur, timid yet not wild;
fruits, even, dangled from the trees, as if, like the bramble, blossom
and seed could live here together and prosper.

Yet why should I be distracted by these things, thought I. I
remembered Maundeville and Hithlodaye, Sindbad and Gulliver, and many
another citizen of Thule, and was reassured. A man must either believe
what he sees, or see what he believes; I know no other course. Why,
too, should I mistrust the bounty of the present merely for the
scarcity of the past? Not I!

I rode on, and it seemed had advanced but a few miles before the sun
stood overhead, and it was noon. We were growing weary, I think, of
sheer delight: Rosinante, with her mild face beneath its dark forelock
gazing this side, that side, at the uncustomary landscape; and I ever
peering fo