The farther the progress which the children made into the forest, the wilder and more singular became the country through which they passed. Shadows cast by no visible forms went before them in the path,--shadows which shook, moved, and trembled; which seemed as if they might all at once become real forms; shadows which had something dreadful about them, so that Eva was glad they were always in advance of her, and that her foot never had to touch the ground on which they lay. The color of the moon’s light was changed. She shone with a pale greenish lustre. No green plants, no beautiful flowers, grew in the stony, rocky soil through which their path now lay. It produced things like sticks full of thorns. Under the stones lay hidden long, slender lizards, or coiled-up serpents with forked and fiery-red tongues; things like dry twigs, which would suddenly display many legs and run away. Slow-crawling, hairy caterpillars, and round, fat, slimy worms, lay everywhere. Things like insects, which yet had no life, grew, instead of flowers, on the thorny sticks which stood among the stones. One of these things, in shape like a dragon-fly, Aster picked; but he immediately dropped it, and said that it had stung him; and from that time Eva thought that he became more and more perverse, and that he was every day less like the gentle, affectionate boy she had been so glad to receive as a companion. She saw, too, that, while her own dress retained its spotless whiteness which nothing seemed to affect, his became every day more and more soiled and stained. She missed, too, the low, sweet songs which had been sung by the flowers. To be sure, she had not always been able to distinguish their words; but they had been friendly, and had warned her of every danger before it came; but this was all over. Every night, as soon as the moon was gone, creatures like bats, with shining heads, came in great numbers, flying around, and moaning in a sad, mournful way which was most pitiful to hear. As the moon neared the full, stranger shadows and shapes came near. Yet the two went on, following the path, though Eva sometimes imagined that the inhabitants of this strange country were opposed to their passing through it. The music which had been always heard at the rising and setting of the moon grew fainter and fainter, till at last her ascent and fall came in perfect silence. Then the strange shadows disappeared, but the path led through a stonier and more rocky country, where all was wild and barren, and where, after the moon was gone, little, dancing flames played on the stones. Sometimes it was hard, indeed almost impossible, for the two children to climb over the rough places in their path; and Aster was very often discouraged; but Eva persevered, for she felt that the flower they sought could never be found in this barren and dreary land.