"You can open this rock for us to pass through," said Naggeneen; "and
what then? A man can see it open for a moment, if you choose to let
him, and the next minute it's all as one as if you had never touched
it. And the man thinks that's wonderful, for he doesn't know that you
can do it no other way. All glamour again! Can you burst the rock open
and leave it open, so that it will always be so, for mortal and for
fairy?"

"Why should I want to be doin' that?" said the King.

"For the same reason makes the men want to do it, but you couldn't.
And those boats that cross the river, full of iron--can you make them,
and can you cross the running water in them?"

The King had no voice to answer. "And the pictures in the boxes,"
Naggeneen went on; "can you make pictures dance?"

"Sure," said the King, "I can make a man think he sees anything I
like--a woman dancing or a horse running, or anything."

"Glamour! Glamour! Glamour!" cried Naggeneen. "You can make him think
he sees! Yes, but he does not see. You can no more make a picture
dance than you can cross a river!" And Naggeneen turned on his heel
and walked off, as if he thought the King a poor creature that was not
worth talking to.

The King had no more courage left in him than if he had been talking
to the King of All Ireland instead of to Naggeneen. "Naggeneen," he
cried, "come back and tell us something better nor all this. It's not
pleasant you are in your talk, and it's often you make me angry with
you, but after all you're cleverer than any of us. Tell us what to do.
It was not like this where we lived before. There we could do all
manner of things that mortals could not, and they were afraid of us."

"And so here too," said Naggeneen, "you can do all manner of things
that mortals cannot, but they can do as many that you cannot--as many
and better."

"But what are we to do," the King went on, "to show them that we're
their masters? Sure we're cleverer than them all out, and we can prove
it in some way."

"King," said Naggeneen, speaking as boldly as if he were himself a
greater king, "you can never prove that you're cleverer than men, for
you're not cleverer. It was a poor, wasted, weak, and sorrowful
country that we came from, and it's a rich, new, strong, and happy
country that we've come to. There's the differ. Clever you are, maybe,
and your people, too, and I may be clever in my own way, and we may
play our little tricks on mortals, as I did on the