me when we next meet.'

So he said, 'And I--whither go I?'

She answered, 'To the City of Oolb straightway.'

Then he, 'But I know not its bearing from this spot: how reach it?'

She answered, 'What! thou with the phial of Paravid in thy vest, that
endoweth, a single drop of it, the flowers, the herbage, the very stones
and desert sands, with a tongue to articulate intelligible talk?'

Said he, 'Is it so?'

She answered, 'Even so.'

Ere Slubli Bagarag could question her further she embraced him, and blew
upon his eyes, and he was blinded by her breath, and saw not her
departure, groping for a seat on the rocks, and thinking her still by
him. Sight returned not to him till long after weariness had brought the
balm of sleep upon his eyelids.

THE TALKING HAWK

Now, when he awoke he found himself alone in that place, the moon shining
over the low meadows and flower-cups fair with night-dew. Odours of
night-flowers were abroad, filling the cool air with deliciousness, and
he heard in the gardens below songs of the bulbul: it was like a dream to
his soul, and he lay somewhile contemplating the rich loveliness of the
scene, that showed no moving thing. Then rose he and bethought him of the
words of Noorna, and of the City of Oolb, and the phial of the waters of
Paravid in his vest; and he drew it forth, and dropped a drop of it on
the rock where he had reclined. A deep harmony seemed suddenly to awake
inside the rock, and to his interrogation as to the direction of Oolb, he
heard, 'The path of the shadows of the moon.'

Thereupon he advanced to a prominent part of the rocks above the meadows,
and beheld the shadows of the moon thrown forward into dimness across a
waste of sand. And he stepped downward to the level of sand, and went the
way of the shadows till it was dawn. Then dropped he a drop of the waters
of the phial on a spike of lavender, and there was a voice said to him in
reply to what he questioned, 'The path of the shadows of the sun.'

The shadows of the sun were thrown forward across the same waste of sand,
and he turned and pursued his way, resting at noon beneath a date-tree,
and refreshing himself at a clear spring beside it. Surely he was joyful
as he went, and elated with high prospects, singing:

Sun and moon with their bright fingers
Point the hero's path;

If in his great work he lingers,
Well may they be wroth.

Now, the extent of the duration of his travel w