He was now in the middle of a large plain, and could see neither the sides nor the roof of what he thought must be a cavern, as it was below the earth, but only a soft gold mist floating above him, and surrounding him on all sides, while the ground was covered with fine glittering gold dust, in which lay great rocks and stones of pure yellow gold, gleaming dully in the subdued yellow twilight. It was truly a wonderful place, and what was more wonderful was, that Kelch now found he had grown again to his natural size; so, very satisfied with everything, he marched along over the plain to look for the Golden Goblin. For a long time the plain was quite lonely, and then he saw one or two people in the distance; shortly afterwards, some more, until at length he found himself among a great crowd of shadows. Kelch knew they were dream-shadows, although they looked like flesh and blood men and women, and he moved through the dense mass quite unnoticed, so intent were they on their occupations. These consisted in picking up nuggets of gold from the ground and putting them in their pockets; but Kelch noticed that all their pockets had the bottoms cut off, so that when the nuggets were put in, they simply fell through to the ground once more. Some of the shadows wore chains of gold, of which they seemed very proud, and not one person paid any attention to another, but each bent eagerly down gathering up the gold, and putting it into their bottomless pockets. There were old white-headed men, palsied elderly women, men in the prime of life, and beautiful maidens; but all their faces wore the same eager expression, as they clutched the shining gold. Kelch could not help pitying them as they worked at their fruitless tasks, but he knew they did it of their own free will, so that the work which appeared a pain to him was a pleasure to them. Suddenly he recollected the phial given to him by the Owl, and, as he did not see anything of the Goblin, pulled it out of his pocket and began to sprinkle the water of contentment on the avaricious shadows. Every time a drop fell on one of them, that shadow vanished, and Kelch knew that it had returned to its sleeping body on earth, quite contented with its station in life, and would look no more for gold. Hundreds of shadows vanished as he sprinkled them with the water of contentment, when all at once a quiver passed through the crowd, and before Kelch had time to wink, the Golden Goblin, with his eyes blazing with rage, stood before him, looking uglier than ever. “Ho! ho!” cried the Goblin furiously; “it is you who are trying to rob me of my subjects—but I’ll give you to the King of Fire. Seize him at once!”