ndmother had sent her away with Mossy.

At length the trees grew smaller, and stood farther apart, and the
ground began to rise, and it got more and more steep, till the trees
were all left behind, and the two were climbing a narrow path with
rocks on each side. Suddenly they came upon a rude doorway, by which
they entered a narrow gallery cut in the rock. It grew darker and
darker, till it was pitch-dark, and they had to feel their way. At
length the light began to return, and at last they came out upon a
narrow path on the face of a lofty precipice. This path went winding
down the rock to a wide plain, circular in shape, and surrounded on all
sides by mountains. Those opposite to them were a great way off, and
towered to an awful height, shooting up sharp, blue, ice-enamelled
pinnacles. An utter silence reigned where they stood. Not even the
sound of water reached them.

Looking down, they could not tell whether the valley below was a grassy
plain or a great still lake. They had never seen any space look like
it. The way to it was difficult and dangerous, but down the narrow path
they went, and reached the bottom in safety. They found it composed of
smooth, light-coloured sandstone, undulating in parts, but mostly
level. It was no wonder to them now that they had not been able to tell
what it was, for this surface was everywhere crowded with shadows. The
mass was chiefly made up of the shadows of leaves innumerable, of all
lovely and imaginative forms, waving to and fro, floating and quivering
in the breath of a breeze whose motion was unfelt, whose sound was
unheard. No forests clothed the mountain-sides, no trees were anywhere
to be seen, and yet the shadows of the leaves, branches, and stems of
all various trees covered the valley as far as their eyes could reach.
They soon spied the shadows of flowers mingled with those of the
leaves, and now and then the shadow of a bird with open beak, and
throat distended with song. At times would appear the forms of strange,
graceful creatures, running up and down the shadow-boles and along the
branches, to disappear in the wind-tossed foliage. As they walked they
waded knee-deep in the lovely lake. For the shadows were not merely
lying on the surface of the ground, but heaped up above it like
substantial forms of darkness, as if they had been cast upon a thousand
different planes of the air. Tangle and Mossy often lifted their heads
and gazed upwards to discry whence the sha