ly upon the side of a
mountain, overlooking a blue frozen lake in the very heart of mighty
hills. Overhead, the _aurora borealis_ was shivering and flashing like
a battle of ten thousand spears. Underneath, its beams passed faintly
over the blue ice and the sides of the snow-clad mountains, whose tops
shot up like huge icicles all about, with here and there a star
sparkling on the very tip of one. But as the northern lights in the sky
above, so wavered and quivered, and shot hither and thither, the
Shadows on the surface of the lake below; now gathering in groups, and
now shivering asunder; now covering the whole surface of the lake, and
anon condensed into one dark knot in the centre. Every here and there
on the white mountains might be seen two or three shooting away towards
the tops, to vanish beyond them, so that their number was gradually,
though not visibly, diminishing.

"Please your majesty," said the Shadows, "this is our church--the
Church of the Shadows."

And so saying, the king's body-guard set down the litter upon a rock,
and plunged into the multitudes below. They soon returned, however, and
bore the king down into the middle of the lake. All the Shadows came
crowding round him, respectfully but fearlessly; and sure never such a
grotesque assembly revealed itself before to mortal eyes. The king had
seen all kind of gnomes, goblins, and kobolds at his coronation; but
they were quite rectilinear figures compared with the insane
lawlessness of form in which the Shadows rejoiced; and the wildest
gambols of the former were orderly dances of ceremony beside the
apparently aimless and wilful contortions of figure, and metamorphoses
of shape, in which the latter indulged. They retained, however, all the
time, to the surprise of the king, an identity, each of his own type,
inexplicably perceptible through every change. Indeed this preservation
of the primary idea of each form was more wonderful than the
bewildering and ridiculous alterations to which the form itself was
every moment subjected.

"What are you?" said the king, leaning on his elbow, and looking around
him.

"The Shadows, your majesty," answered several voices at once.

"What Shadows?"

"The human Shadows. The Shadows of men, and women, and their children."

"Are you not the shadows of chairs and tables, and pokers and tongs,
just as well?"

At this question a strange jarring commotion went through the assembly
with a shock. Several of the