at the pains to visit this Knoll thrice since his story grew up

under my persuasions, and once I went there in the twilight summer

moonrise on what was, perhaps, a similar night to that of his adventure.

Jupiter was great and splendid above the moon, and in the north

and northwest the sky was green and vividly bright over the sunken

sun. The Knoll stands out bare and bleak under the sky, but surrounded

at a little distance by dark thickets, and as I went up towards it

there was a mighty starting and scampering of ghostly or quite

invisible rabbits. Just over the crown of the Knoll, but nowhere else,

was a multitudinous thin trumpeting of midges. The Knoll is, I believe,

an artificial mound, the tumulus of some great prehistoric chieftain,

and surely no man ever chose a more spacious prospect for a sepulchre.

Eastward one sees along the hills to Hythe, and thence across

the Channel to where, thirty miles and more perhaps, away, the great

white lights by Gris Nez and Boulogne wink and pass and shine.

Westward lies the whole tumbled valley of the Weald, visible as far

as Hindhead and Leith Hill, and the valley of the Stour opens

the Downs in the north to interminable hills beyond Wye. All

Romney Marsh lies southward at one's feet, Dymchurch and Romney

and Lydd, Hastings and its hill are in the middle distance, and

the hills multiply vaguely far beyond where Eastbourne rolls up

to Beachy Head.



And out upon all this it was that Skelmersdale wandered, being troubled

in his earlier love affair, and as he says, "not caring WHERE he went."

And there he sat down to think it over, and so, sulking and grieving,

was overtaken by sleep. And so he fell into the fairies' power.



The quarrel that had upset him was some trivial matter enough

between himself and the girl at Clapton Hill to whom he was engaged.

She was a farmer's daughter, said Skelmersdale, and "very respectable,"

and no doubt an excellent match for him; but both girl and lover

were very young and with just that mutual jealousy, that intolerantly

keen edge of criticism, that irrational hunger for a beautiful

perfection, that life and wisdom do presently and most mercifully

dull. What the precise matter of quarrel was I have no idea. She may

have said she liked men in gaiters when he hadn't any gaiters on,

or he may have said he liked her better in a different sort of hat,

but however it began, it got by a series of clumsy stages to bitterness

and tears. She no doubt got tearful and smeary, and he grew dusty

and drooping, and she parted with invidious comparisons, grave doubts

whether she ever had REALLY cared for him, and a clear certainty

she would never care again. And with this sort of thing upon his mind

he came out upon Aldington Knoll grieving, and presently, after

a long interval, perhaps, quite inexplicably, fell asleep.



He woke to find himself on a softer turf than ever he had slept

on before, and under the shade of very dark trees that completely

hid the sky. Always, indeed, in Fairyland the sky is hidden, it seems.

Except for one night when the fairies were dancing, Mr. Skelmersdale,



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