lies straight
on. The ice-ghosts leer from the topmost clouds, and the mists surge
round, but he shakes his lance and pipes his call, and at last he comes
to the Milky Way, where the sky-sylphs lead him to their queen, who lies
couched in a palace ceiled with stars, its dome held up by northern
lights and the curtains made of the morning's flush. Her mantle is
twilight purple, tied with threads of gold from the eastern dawn, and her
face is as fair as the silver moon.

She begs the fay to stay with her and taste forever the joys of heaven,
but the knightly elf keeps down the beating of his heart, for he
remembers a face on earth that is fairer than hers, and he begs to go.
With a sigh she fits him a car of cloud, with the fire-fly steed chained
on behind, and he hurries away to the northern sky whence the meteor
comes, with roar and whirl, and as it passes it bursts to flame. He
lights his lamp at a glowing spark, then wheels away to the fairy-land.
His king and his brothers hail him stoutly, with song and shout, and
feast and dance, and the revel is kept till the eastern sky has a ruddy
streak. Then the cock crows shrill and the fays are gone.

POKEPSIE

The name of this town has forty-two spellings in old records, and with
singular pertinacity in ill-doing, the inhabitants have fastened on it
the longest and clumsiest of all. It comes from the Mohegan words
Apo-keep-sink, meaning a safe, pleasant harbor. Harbor it might be for
canoes, but for nothing bigger, for it was only the little cove that was
so called between Call Rock and Adder Cliff,--the former indicating where
settlers awaiting passage hailed the masters of vessels from its top, and
the latter taking its name from the snakes that abounded there.

Hither came a band of Delawares with Pequot captives, among them a young
chief to whom had been offered not only life but leadership if he would
renounce his tribe, receive the mark of the turtle on his breast, and
become a Delaware. On his refusal, he was bound to a tree, and was about
to undergo the torture, when a girl among the listeners sprang to his
side. She, too, was a Pequot, but the turtle totem was on her bosom, and
when she begged his life, because they had been betrothed, the captors
paused to talk of it. She had chosen well the time to interfere, for a
band of Hurons was approaching, and even as the talk went on their yell
was heard in the wood. Instant measures for defence were taken, and in