token of homage they could show.

"What do you want?" said the king.

"That it may please your majesty to be better acquainted with us,"
answered they. "We are your majesty's subjects."

"I know you are. I shall be most happy," answered the king.

"We are not what your majesty takes us for, though. We are not so
foolish as your majesty thinks us."

"It is impossible to take you for anything that I know of," rejoined
the king, who wished to make them talk, and said whatever came
uppermost;--"for soldiers, sailors, or anything: you will not stand
still long enough. I suppose you really belong to the fire brigade; at
least, you keep putting its light out."

"Don't jest, please your majesty." And as they said the words--for they
both spoke at once throughout the interview--they performed a grave
somerset towards the king.

"Not jest!" retorted he; "and with you? Why, you do nothing but jest.
What are you?"

"The Shadows, sire. And when we do jest, sire, we always jest in
earnest. But perhaps your majesty does not see us distinctly."

"I see you perfectly well," returned the king.

"Permit me, however," rejoined one of the Shadows; and as he spoke he
approached the king; and lifting a dark forefinger, he drew it lightly
but carefully across the ridge of his forehead, from temple to temple.
The king felt the soft gliding touch go, like water, into every hollow,
and over the top of every height of that mountain-chain of thought. He
had involuntarily closed his eyes during the operation, and when he
unclosed them again, as soon as the finger was withdrawn, he found that
they were opened in more senses than one. The room appeared to have
extended itself on all sides, till he could not exactly see where the
walls were; and all about it stood the Shadows motionless. They were
tall and solemn; rather awful, indeed, in their appearance,
notwithstanding many remarkable traits of grotesqueness, for they
looked just like the pictures of Puritans drawn by Cavaliers, with long
arms, and very long, thin legs, from which hung large loose feet, while
in their countenances length of chin and nose predominated. The
solemnity of their mien, however, overcame all the oddity of their
form, so that they were very _eerie_ indeed to look at, dressed as they
all were in funereal black. But a single glance was all that the king
was allowed to have; for the former operator waved his dusky palm
across his vision, and once more the king saw