untrodden, and moss was thick on
doorsteps; in the market-place huddled figures lay asleep. A scent
of incense came wafted through the gateway, of incense and burned
poppies, and there was a hum of the echoes of distant bells. I said
to the sentinel in the tongue of the region of Yann, 'Why are they all
asleep in this still city?'

He answered: 'None may ask questions in this gate for fear they wake
the people of the city. For when the people of this city wake the gods
will die. And when the gods die men may dream no more.' And I began to
ask him what gods that city worshipped, but he lifted his pike because
none might ask questions there. So I left him and went back to the
_Bird of the River_.

Certainly Mandaroon was beautiful with her white pinnacles peering
over her ruddy walls and the green of her copper roofs.

When I came back again to the _Bird of the River_, I found the sailors
were returned to the ship. Soon we weighed anchor, and sailed out
again, and so came once more to the middle of the river. And now the
sun was moving towards his heights, and there had reached us on the
River Yann the song of those countless myriads of choirs that attend
him in his progress round the world. For the little creatures that
have many legs had spread their gauze wings easily on the air, as
a man rests his elbows on a balcony, and gave jubilant, ceremonial
praises to the sun, or else they moved together on the air in wavering
dances intricate and swift, or turned aside to avoid the onrush of
some drop of water that a breeze had shaken from a jungle orchid,
chilling the air and driving it before it, as it fell whirring in its
rush to the earth; but all the while they sang triumphantly. 'For the
day is for us,' they said, 'whether our great and sacred father the
Sun shall bring up more life like us from the marshes, or whether all
the world shall end to-night.' And there sang all those whose notes
are known to human ears, as well as those whose far more numerous
notes have been never heard by man.

To these a rainy day had been as an era of war that should desolate
continents during all the lifetime of a man.

And there came out also from the dark and steaming jungle to behold
and rejoice in the Sun the huge and lazy butterflies. And they danced,
but danced idly, on the ways of the air, as some haughty queen of
distant conquered lands might in her poverty and exile dance, in some
encampment of the gipsies, for the mere br