beautiful as our ways of yesterday. The
ways of to-day were the most beautiful of all. We were going to Bretton
Woods, and on the way we learned a great secret--this: that when the
Fairies made their flit--the well-known Dymchurch Flit--they decided to
emigrate to the White Mountains. Somebody had told them--probably it was
the Moon--that the scenery there was marvellously suited to their
tastes, and would give them a chance to try experiments in landscape
gardening according to Fairy ideas. It seemed likely that they might
remain undiscovered in the new fastness for many centuries, and that
when the time came for their presence to be suspected, the world would
have assumed a new policy toward the Fay race. No cruel calumnies would
be written or spoken about them, such as saying that they cast spells on
children or animals, and it would be between Man and Fairy a case of
"live and let live."

Some dull, unobservant people might think that our road was walled on
one side by gray-blue rocks, but in reality they are dark, uncut
sapphires, a facade decoration for the Fairy King's palace. Those same
dullards might talk of scattered boulders. They are trophies, teeth of
giants slain by Fairy warriors. Fairies melt cairngorms and topazes
which they find deep in the heart of the mountains, and pouring them
into the sources of rivers and brooks give the colour of liquid gold to
the water which might otherwise be a mere whitish-gray or brown. Fairies
crust the stones with silver filagree-work dotted with diamonds. Fairies
have planted blue asters and goldenrod and sumach in borders, studying
every gradation of colour, and while the flowers lie under the spell of
the sun they become magic jewels, because the seeds were brought from
Fairyland. Fairies, who no longer bewitch children, have turned their
attention instead to enchanting the young, slender birches of the
mountain waysides. The enchantment consists in causing rays of moonlight
always to glimmer mysteriously on the white trunks, in full daylight.
They seem illuminated, even to eyes that haven't found out the secret.
The carpets of moss are the Fairies' roof-gardens, where they dance and
pretend to be ferns if you look at them. The round stones in the
water-beds are the giants' pearls which were lost in the great battle.
The music of the forest is an orchestra consisting of Fairy voices and
stringed instruments, harps, violins, and 'cellos. And now and then I
caught a hig