Across it you saw the gray house-chimneys of the lonely house reputed
to be haunted. Opposite its door stood an old fort on a little hill, a
noted resort of the fairies. Any summer gloaming at all, you might see
their hundreds of little lamps threading a fantastic measure in and
out on the rath. I never heard that any one saw more of them than
those lights, which floated away if any were bold enough to approach
them, like glorified balls of that thistledown of which children
divine what's o'clock.
At the other side of the Ten Acres was a fantastic corner of grass,
which was always a miniature meadow. There swung the scarlet and black
butterflies which have flown into Fairyland, and there the corn-crake
built her nest in the grass. It was a famous corner for
bird's-nesting, which with us took no crueller form than liking to
part the thick leaves to peep at the pretty, perturbed mother-thrush
on her clutch. Sometimes we peeped too often, and she flew away and
left the eggs cold. We saw the world from that corner, for one could
see through the hedge on to the road by lying low where the roots of
the hedge-row made a thinness. We should not have cared about this if
it were not that we could look, unseen ourselves, at the infrequent
passer-by, for the hedge grew luxuriantly. Further down it became
partly a clay bank, and there on the coarse grass used to hang
snail-shells of all sizes, and, as I remember them, of shining gold
and silver. The inhabitant was the drawback to all that beauty, yet
when we found an empty house, it was cold, dull, and with the sheen
vanished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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