iant fell dead at the feet of
little Tricksey-Wee, who could not help being sorry for him after all.

THE GOLDEN KEY.

There was a boy who used to sit in the twilight and listen to his
great-aunt's stories.

She told him that if he could reach the place where the end of the
rainbow stands he would find there a golden key.

"And what is the key for?" the boy would ask. "What is it the key of?
What will it open?"

"That nobody knows," his aunt would reply. "He has to find that out."

"I suppose, being gold," the boy once said, thoughtfully, "that I could
get a good deal of money for it if I sold it."

"Better never find it than sell it," returned his aunt. And then the
boy went to bed and dreamed about the golden key.

Now, all that his great-aunt told the boy about the golden key would
have been nonsense, had it not been that their little house stood on
the borders of Fairyland. For it is perfectly well known that out of
Fairyland nobody ever can find where the rainbow stands. The creature
takes such good care of its golden key, always flitting from place to
place, lest anyone should find it! But in Fairyland it is quite
different. Things that look real in this country look very thin indeed
in Fairyland, while some of the things that here cannot stand still for
a moment, will not move there. So it was not in the least absurd of the
old lady to tell her nephew such things about the golden key.

"Did you ever know anybody find it?" he asked one evening.

"Yes. Your father, I believe, found it."

"And what did he do with it, can you tell me?"

"He never told me."

"What was it like?"

"He never showed it to me."

"How does a new key come there always?"

"I don't know. There it is."

"Perhaps it is the rainbow's egg."

"Perhaps it is. You will be a happy boy if you find the nest."

"Perhaps it comes tumbling down the rainbow from the sky."

"Perhaps it does."

One evening, in summer, he went into his own room, and stood at the
lattice-window, and gazed into the forest which fringed the outskirts
of Fairyland. It came close up to his great-aunt's garden, and, indeed,
sent some straggling trees into it. The forest lay to the east, and the
sun, which was setting behind the cottage, looked straight into the
dark wood with his level red eye. The trees were all old, and had few
branches below, so that the sun could see a great way into the forest;
and the boy, being keen-sighted, coul