he eastern hill,
and the shadow that fell from me, lay only where his beams fell not. I
danced for joy. It was only the natural shadow, that goes with every man
who walks in the sun. As he arose, higher and higher, the shadow-head
sank down the side of the opposite hill, and crept in across the valley
towards my feet.

Now that I was so joyously delivered from this fear, I saw and
recognised the country around me. In the valley below, lay my own
castle, and the haunts of my childhood were all about me hastened home.
My sisters received me with unspeakable joy; but I suppose they observed
some change in me, for a kind of respect, with a slight touch of awe in
it, mingled with their joy, and made me ashamed. They had been in great
distress about me. On the morning of my disappearance, they had found
the floor of my room flooded; and, all that day, a wondrous and nearly
impervious mist had hung about the castle and grounds. I had been gone,
they told me, twenty-one days. To me it seemed twenty-one years. Nor
could I yet feel quite secure in my new experiences. When, at night, I
lay down once more in my own bed, I did not feel at all sure that when I
awoke, I should not find myself in some mysterious region of Fairy Land.
My dreams were incessant and perturbed; but when I did awake, I saw
clearly that I was in my own home.

My mind soon grew calm; and I began the duties of my new position,
somewhat instructed, I hoped, by the adventures that had befallen me in
Fairy Land. Could I translate the experience of my travels there, into
common life? This was the question. Or must I live it all over again,
and learn it all over again, in the other forms that belong to the world
of men, whose experience yet runs parallel to that of Fairy Land? These
questions I cannot answer yet. But I fear.

Even yet, I find myself looking round sometimes with anxiety, to see
whether my shadow falls right away from the sun or no. I have never yet
discovered any inclination to either side. And if I am not unfrequently
sad, I yet cast no more of a shade on the earth, than most men who have
lived in it as long as I. I have a strange feeling sometimes, that I am
a ghost, sent into the world to minister to my fellow men, or, rather,
to repair the wrongs I have already done.

May the world be brighter for me, at least in those portions of it,
where my darkness falls not.

Thus I, who set out to find my Ideal, came back rejoicing that I had
lost my