this moment it seemed as though the sleeper heard the bird's
discourse. Her beautiful face was suffused with a delicate redness,
and her features took the expression of an ineffable desire. 'Lead me
to the wise old man!' cried the student, half beside himself.

"The bird hopped into the bushes, and the student hurried after her.
The magpie fluttered up a narrow rocky path which soon led over a marsh
and wildly scattered blocks of stones, with great peril to the
traveller. The student was forced to clamber from block to block that
he might not sink into the marsh. His knees trembled, his heart
heaved, his temples were bathed in a cold sweat. As he hastened along
he plucked off flowers and leaves and sprinkled them on the stones that
he might again find his way. At last he stood on an eminence of
considerable height upon a spacious rocky portal, from the dark hollow
of which an icy-cold breeze blew towards him. Here nature seemed to be
in her primitive state of fermention, so fearfully and in such wild
disorder did the masses of stone stand over, by, and before the cavern.

"'Here dwells our wise man!' cried the magpie, while she bristled up
her feathers from her head to her tail, which gave her a most
unpleasant and repulsive appearance, 'I will announce you, and ask how
he feels disposed as to your wish.' With these words, she slipped into
the hollow, and almost immediately jumped back again, crying, 'The old
man is peevish and obstinate, and he will not give you the bough of
yew, unless you stop up all the chinks in the cavern, for he says the
draught annoys him. Before you can do this, many years may have
passed.'

"The student plucked up as much of the moss and herbage as he could,
and, not without a feeling of dread, entered the cavern. Within
strangely-shaped stalactites were staring at him from the walls, and he
did not know where to turn his eyes to avoid these hideous forms. He
wished to penetrate deeper by the rocky path, but from the further
corner a voice snorted forth to him: 'Back! disturb me not in my
researches, pursue thy occupation there in the front!' He wished to
discover who was speaking, but only saw a pair of red fiery eyes, that
shone out of the darkness. He now set about his task, stopped up with
moss and herbage every chink through which a glimmer of daylight
passed, but this was a difficult, and--as it seemed to him--an endless
task. For when he thought he had done with one cran