certain it is, that, even in the common world, the soil, close up to
farm-houses, as close up to pasture rocks, is, even though untended,
ever richer than it is a few rods off--such gentle, nurturing heat is
radiated there.

But with this cottage, the shaded streaks were richest in its front and
about its entrance, where the ground-sill, and especially the doorsill
had, through long eld, quietly settled down.

No fence was seen, no inclosure. Near by--ferns, ferns, ferns;
further--woods, woods, woods; beyond--mountains, mountains, mountains;
then--sky, sky, sky. Turned out in aerial commons, pasture for the
mountain moon. Nature, and but nature, house and, all; even a low
cross-pile of silver birch, piled openly, to season; up among whose
silvery sticks, as through the fencing of some sequestered grave, sprang
vagrant raspberry bushes--willful assertors of their right of way.

The foot-track, so dainty narrow, just like a sheep-track, led through
long ferns that lodged. Fairy land at last, thought I; Una and her lamb
dwell here. Truly, a small abode--mere palanquin, set down on the
summit, in a pass between two worlds, participant of neither.

A sultry hour, and I wore a light hat, of yellow sinnet, with white duck
trowsers--both relics of my tropic sea-going. Clogged in the muffling
ferns, I softly stumbled, staining the knees a sea-green.

Pausing at the threshold, or rather where threshold once had been, I
saw, through the open door-way, a lonely girl, sewing at a lonely
window. A pale-cheeked girl, and fly-specked window, with wasps about
the mended upper panes. I spoke. She shyly started, like some Tahiti
girl, secreted for a sacrifice, first catching sight, through palms, of
Captain Cook. Recovering, she bade me enter; with her apron brushed off
a stool; then silently resumed her own. With thanks I took the stool;
but now, for a space, I, too, was mute. This, then, is the
fairy-mountain house, and here, the fairy queen sitting at her fairy
window.

I went up to it. Downwards, directed by the tunneled pass, as through a
leveled telescope, I caught sight of a, far-off, soft, azure world. I
hardly knew it, though I came from it.

"You must find this view very pleasant," said I, at last.

"Oh, sir," tears starting in her eyes, "the first time I looked out of
this window, I said 'never, never shall I weary of this.'"

"And what wearies you of it now?"

"I don't know," while a tear fell; "but it is not the