He had reached a square, on one side of which was a huge building with a domed roof. Light streamed from it through a great window of stained glass, on which was depicted a blue warrior fighting with a red dragon ... no, it was not a stained glass window but merely the reflection on the white walls of the building from a house in complete darkness in the opposite side of the square, inhabited by creatures made of red lacquer. He knew that they were expecting him to call, because they believed that he was courting one of them. "What else could bring him here save all this lovely spawn?" said a voice at his elbow. He looked round--suddenly the streets were pullulating with strange semi-human fauna: tiny green men, the wax figures of his parents from Hempie's chimney-piece, grimacing greybeards with lovely children gamboling round them dressed in beetles' shards. Now they were dancing, some slow old-fashioned dance ... in and out, in and out. Why, they were only figures on a piece of tapestry flapping in the wind! Once more he felt his horse beneath him. But what were these little pattering footsteps behind him? He turned uneasily in his saddle, to discover that it was nothing but a gust of wind rustling a little eddy of dead leaves. The town and its strange fauna had vanished, and once more he was riding up the bridle-path; but now it was night. CHAPTER XXVIII "BY THE SUN, MOON AND STARS AND THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE WEST" Though it was a relief to have returned to the fresh air of reality, Master Nathaniel was frightened. He realized that he was alone at dead of night in the Elfin Marches. And the moon kept playing tricks on him, turning trees and boulders into goblins and wild beasts; cracking her jokes, true humourist that she was, with a solemn impassive face. But, how was this? She was a waxing moon, and almost full, while the night before--or what he supposed was the night before--she had been a half moon on the wane. Had he left time behind him in Dorimare? Then suddenly, like some winged monster rushing from its lair, there sprang up a mighty wind. The pines creaked and rustled and bent beneath its onslaught, the grasses whistled, the clouds flocked together and covered the face of the moon. Several times he was nearly lifted from his saddle. He drew his cloak closely round him, and longed, with an unspeakable longing, for his warm bed in Lud; and it flashed into his mind that what he had so often imagined in that bed, to enhance his sense of well-being, was now actually occurring--he was tired, he was cold, and the wind was finding the fissures in his doublet.