eamed like a golden spear, they fixed
their eyes on the line between the shadow and the sunshine.

"Now," said Connla, "the time has come."

"Oh, look! look!" said Nora, and as she spoke, just above the line of
shadow a door opened out, and through its portals came a little piper
dressed in green and gold. He stepped down, followed by another and
another, until they were nine in all, and then the door slung back
again. Down through the heather marched the pipers in single file, and
all the time they played a music so sweet that the birds, who had gone
to sleep in their nests, came out upon the branches to listen to them
and then they crossed the meadow, and they went on and on until they
disappeared in the leafy woods.

While they were passing the children were spell-bound, and couldn't
speak, but when the music had died away in the woods, they said:

"The thrush is right, that is the sweetest music that was ever heard
in all the world."

And when the children went to bed that night the fairy music came to
them in their dreams. But when the morning broke, and they looked out
upon their mountain and could see no trace of the door above the
heather, they asked each other whether they had really seen the little
pipers, or only dreamt of them.

That day they went out into the woods, and they sat beside a stream
that pattered along beneath the trees, and through the leaves tossing
in the breeze the sun flashed down upon the streamlet, and shadow and
sunshine danced upon it. As the children watched the water sparkling
where the sunlight fell, Nora said:

"Oh, Connla, did you ever see anything so bright and clear and
glancing as that?"

"No," said Connla, "I never did."

"That's because you never saw the crystal hall of the fairy of the
mountains," said a voice above the heads of the children.

And when they looked up, who should they see perched on a branch but
the thrush.

"And where is the crystal hall of the fairy?" said Connla.

"Oh, it is where it always was, and where it always will be," said the
thrush. "And you can see it if you like."

"We would like to see it," said the children.

"Well, then," said the thrush, "if you would, all you have to do is to
follow the nine little pipers when they come down through the heather,
and cross the meadow to-morrow evening."

And the thrush having said this, flew away.

Connla and Nora went home, and that night they fell asleep talking of
the thrush and the fa