--real white heather, not the faded
flowers which children sometimes mistake for it. Karl treasured the
spray carefully.

"And how did you come to be among the dwarfs?" said Norah. But their
further conversation was checked by a little brook that ran straight
across the path. Now Norah usually took off her shoes and stockings and
waded over this stream; but she did not like to do so with Karl looking
on. Karl would have liked to pick her up in his arms and carry her
across like a true hero of romance; but he was shy of proposing it. So
he fetched some large flat stones, placed them dexterously in the
stream, and sprang across himself, then he held out a hand to Norah who
stepped over as quickly and gracefully as a young deer.

"Now I will tell you how it was you found me in dwarfland," said Karl as
they walked on together. "I was at work on the new tunnel----"

"You'll not be telling me that you are a working man?" said Norah.

"No I am an engineer. I was on duty looking after the men, then, somehow
or other I fell against the wall of the tunnel and hurt my arm"; he
showed her his torn coat as a proof of the story.

"Poor thing," she interrupted, "did you bind it up properly?"

"O, it was a mere nothing," said Karl. "Well--I found myself in a
strange winding passage that led right down into the central hall of the
dwarfs." He did not wish to say that he had been asleep; he thought that
would sound so silly. "Queer little fellows they are, those dwarfs," he
continued, "awfully ignorant too. Now will you believe it they had never
heard of the Zeppelin airship?"

"We'll really have to give them lessons," said Norah, laughing, "but
perhaps they are not so stupid as they make themselves out to be!"

Climbing over boulders and stones, laughing and talking the while like
two children just out of school, they reached the bottom of the mountain
and saw the village. It could hardly be called a town as yet, though
Norah's father hoped that the new railway station would speedily convert
it into one.

"Do you know where our hotel is?" said Norah. "It is at the other end of
the village; we will go round through the fields; the village folk stare
so; they are up at five o'clock to do their field-work.

"There it is!" she called out proudly, pointing to a large white house
with green shutters on which the words "Hotel Fancy" were written in
large gold letters.

"What a queer name for an hotel!" said Karl.

"Yes, don't you