Whereupon I broke out in reply:
"He says I am a night-witch,
But this I do deny;
For I'm a child of faery,
And my house it is the sky."
Mr. Flickers said no more. 'Twas not surprising, either. I much question whether any human creature could have conversationally shone in that moonlit wood just then. Those simple soldiers, shown on a solemn background of gloom and mighty trees, were sufficient in that eerie light to shatter the nerves of a person of the strongest mind should he come upon them suddenly. What must I have been, then? And these victims being very little encumbered with their education had, therefore, the less restriction imposed upon their ignorant fancies. 'Twas quite certain that I was either a witch or a rather superior sort of devil, as, of course, the popular conception of fiends is not by any means so beautiful.
I did not venture any nearer to them than I need, lest they should discover too many evidences in me of the very clay of which they were themselves composed.
"Behold in me," cried I, in prose, but with that impressive grandeur that belongs to the queens of tragedy, "behold in me the Spirit of the Woods. And he who heeds me not shall be surely lost."
Prose even upon these primitive minds seemed to lack the natural magic that is in poetry. For
