ld still be beyond them; and even if you reached them,
you would still see others further away, and would have to go to them,
and you would never come to where my home is."

"Ah me!" sighed Christlieb. "Then you must live hundreds and hundreds
of miles away from us. It is only on a sort of visit that you are
here?"

"Christlieb, darling," the Stranger Child said; "whenever you long for
me with all your heart, I am with you immediately, bringing you all
those plays and wonders from my home with me; and is not that quite as
good as if we were in my home together, playing there?"

"Not at all," Felix said; "for I believe that your home is some most
glorious place, full of all sorts of delightful things which you
bring--some of them--here with you. I don't care how hard you may say
the road is to your home, I mean to set out upon it this minute. To
work one's way through forests--by difficult tracks--to climb
mountains, and wade rivers, and break through all sorts of thickets,
and clamber over rugged rocks--all that is a woodsman's proper
business, and I'm going to do it."

"And so you shall!" said the Stranger Child, smiling pleasantly; "for
when you put it all so clearly before you, and make up your mind to it,
it is as good as done. The land where I live is, in truth, so beautiful
and glorious that I can give you no description of it. It is my mother
who reigns over that country--all glory and loveliness--as queen."

"Ah, you are a prince!" "Ah, then, you are a princess! the two children
cried together, amazed, and almost terrified.

"I am, certainly," the Stranger Child replied.

"Then you live in a beautiful palace?" Felix cried.

"Yes," said the Stranger Child. "My mother's palace is far more
beautiful than those glittering castles which you saw in the evening
clouds; for the gleaming pillars of her palace are all of the purest
crystal, and they soar, slender and tall, into the blue of heaven; and
upon them there rests a great, wide canopy; beneath that canopy sail
the shining clouds, hither and thither, on golden wings, and the red of
the evening and the morning rises and falls, and the sparkling stars
dance in singing circles. Dearest playmates, you have heard of the
fairies, who can bring about the most glorious wonders, as mortal men
cannot; now, my mother is one of the most powerful fairies of all. All
that lives and moves on earth she holds embraced to her heart in the
purest and truest love; although,