gled. Down the long path to the gate, where three roads met,
great bunches of peonies lifted white blossoms--luminously white in
the moonlight; and on either side rows of currant bushes cast low,
dark shadows, and here and there dwarf crab-apple trees tossed pale,
scented flowers above them. In the dusky evening light the iris
flowers showed frail and iridescent against the dark shadows under the
bushes.

The children chattered quietly at their play, as if they felt a
mystery around them, and small Betty was sure she saw fairies dancing
on the iris flowers when the light breeze stirred them; but of this
she said nothing, lest her practical older sister should drop a
scornful word of unbelief, a thing Betty shrank from and instinctively
avoided. Why should she be told there were no such things as fairies
and goblins and pigwidgeons, when one might be at that very moment
dancing at her elbow and hear it all?

So Betty wagged her curly golden head, wise with the wisdom of
childhood, and went her own ways and thought her own thoughts. As for
the strange creatures of wondrous power that peopled the earth, and
the sky, and the streams, she knew they were there. She could almost
see them, could almost feel them and hear them, even though they were
hidden from mortal sight.

Did she not often go when the sun was setting and climb the fence
behind the barn under the great locust and silver-leaf poplar trees,
where none could see her, and watch the fiery griffins in the west?
Could she not see them flame and flash, their wings spreading far out
across the sky in fantastic flight, or drawn close and folded about
them in hues of purple and crimson and gold? Could she not see the
flying mist-women flinging their floating robes of softest pink and
palest green around their slender limbs, and trailing them delicately
across the deepening sky?

Had she not heard the giants--nay, seen them--driving their terrible
steeds over the tumbled clouds, and rolling them smooth with noise of
thunder, under huge rolling machines a thousand times bigger than
that Farmer Hopkins used to crush the clods in his wheat field in the
spring? Had she not seen the flashes of fire dart through the heavens,
struck by the hoofs of the giants' huge beasts? Ah! She knew! If
Martha would only listen to her, she could show her some of these true
things and stop her scoffing.

Lured by these mysteries, Betty made short excursions into the garden
away from th