forms and
colours of vanished times. They can create for themselves a phantasm
of the past by re-arranging the splinters of light which were once
shattered against the forms of men, animals, plants and rocks, so that
they again flash across the centuries through the unfathomable ether.

The venerable Nur excelled in discovering figures of antiquity and even
such, inconceivable though it may seem, as lived before the earth
had assumed the shape with which we are familiar. So it was really no
trouble at all for him to find George of Blanchelande.

Having looked for a moment through a very ordinary telescope indeed, he
said to King Loc:

"King Loc, he for whom you search is with the nixies in their palace of
crystal, from which none ever return, and whose iridescent walls adjoin
your kingdom."

"Is he there?" cried the king, "Let him stay!" and he rubbed his hands.
"I wish him joy."

And having embraced the venerable dwarf, he emerged out of the well
roaring with laughter.

The whole length of the road he held his sides so as to laugh at his
ease; his head shook, and his beard swung backwards and forwards on his
stomach. How he laughed! The little men who met him laughed out of sheer
sympathy. Seeing them laugh made others laugh. A contagion of laughter
spread from place to place until the whole interior of the earth was
shaken as if with a mighty and jovial hiccough. Ha! ha! ha!

XVII

Which tells of the wonderful adventure of George of
Blanchelande

King Loc did not laugh long; indeed he hid the face of a very unhappy
little man under the bed-clothes.

He lay awake all night long thinking of George of Blanchelande, the
prisoner of the nixies.

So about the hour when such of the dwarfs as have a dairymaid for
sweetheart go in her stead to milk the cows while she sleeps in her
white bed with folded hands, little King Loc again sought the astute Nur
in the depths of his well.

"You did not tell me, Nur, what he is doing down there with the nixies?"

The venerable Nur was quite convinced that the king was mad, though that
did not alarm him because he knew if King Loc should lose his reason
he would be a most gracious, charming, amiable and kindly lunatic. The
madness of the dwarfs is gentle like their reason, and full of the most
delicious fancies. But King Loc was not mad; at least not more so than
lovers usually are.

"I wish to speak of George of Blanchelande," he said to the venerable