ad, and followed
the hedge, hoping that the fog was only in the valley, and that she
would soon pass out of it. On and on it stretched, however, till she
must have been walking through it for quite twenty minutes. Then she
began to grow uneasy. There was a border of grass under the hedge bank
wider than she remembered noticing on the road, and the suspicion
assailed her that all unknowingly she must have turned down a side lane
and have lost her way.

She went forward now with doubting footsteps. Where was the path leading
her? If she could only find some cottage, she could inquire. But there
was no human habitation, nothing but the endless hedges and an
occasional gate into a field. What was that in front of her? She
stopped, and drew back with a cry of fear. Across her track gleamed
water. She had almost stepped into it. Whether it was stream, pond, or
river the thick mist did not reveal, but it certainly barred her
footpath. She shivered, and turning round, walked back in the direction
from which she had come, hoping to regain the high road.

Then a wonderful atmospheric effect was displayed. A breeze sprang up
and blew aside some of the fog, and the rising moon shone down on a land
of white shadows. It was impossible to tell what was real and what was
unreal. On the other side of the lane stretched what appeared to be a
vast lake, but might only be mist on the meadows; cloud-like masses
shaped themselves into spectral forms and rolled away into the dim and
nebulous distance, where they settled into weird domes and towers and
walls, a veritable elf king's castle. It was so uncanny and silent and
strange that Carmel was far more frightened than she had felt before.
Old fairy tales of her childhood crowded into her mind, memories of
phantoms and ghosts and goblins, the legends of Undine and the water
sprites, the ballad of the Erl-King in the haunted forest. She had
learnt the poem once, and she found herself repeating the words:

"'Why trembles my darling? Why shrinks he with fear?'
'Oh Father, my Father! the Erl-King is near!
The Erl-King with his crown and his beard long and white!'
'Oh! your eyes are deceived by the vapours of night!'

* * * * *

"'I love thee, I dote on thy face so divine!
I must and will have thee, and force makes thee mine!'
'My Father! My Father! Oh hold me now fast!
He pulls me, he hurts, and will have me at last!'"