had a clan or
train of little sprites attending him--small, delicate, aerial
creatures, who came and went around him at their pleasure, and showed
him wonderful things, and sang to him, and kept him from being
discouraged, and often helped him with his work.

If you ask me what they were and where they came from, I must frankly
tell you that I do not know. Neither did the man know. Neither does
anybody else know.

But the man had sense enough to understand that they were real--just
as real as any of the other mysterious things, like microbes, and
polonium, and chemical affinities, and the northern lights, by which
we are surrounded. Sometimes it seemed as if the sprites were the
children of the flowers that die in blooming; and sometimes as if they
came in a flock with the birds from the south; and sometimes as if
they rose one by one from the roots of the trees in the deep forest,
or from the waves of the sea when the moon lay upon them; and
sometimes as if they appeared suddenly in the streets of the city
after the people had passed by and the houses had gone to sleep. They
were as light as thistle-down, as unsubstantial as mists upon the
mountain, as wayward and flickering as will-o'-the-wisps. But there
was something immortal about them, and the man knew that the world
would be nothing to him without their presence and comradeship.

Most of these attendant sprites were gentle and docile; but there was
one who had a strain of wildness in him. In his hand he carried a bow,
and at his shoulder a quiver of arrows, and he looked as if, some day
or other, he might be up to mischief.

Now this man was much befriended by a certain lady, to whom he used to
bring his stories in order that she might tell him whether they were
good, or bad, or merely popular. But whatever she might think of the
stories, always she liked the man, and of the airy fluttering sprites
she grew so fond that it almost seemed as if they were her own
children. This was not unnatural, for they were devoted to her; they
turned the pages of her book when she read; they made her walks
through the forest pleasant and friendly; they lit lanterns for her in
the dark; they brought flowers to her and sang to her, as well as to
the man. Of this he was glad, because of his great friendship for the
lady and his desire to see her happy.

But one day she complained to him of the sprite who carried the bow.
"He is behaving badly," said she; "he teases me."

"T