On the fourth morning I found myself on a sandy plain bright with the sun, and sat on a rock in its beams, for I loved now to enjoy its long-withheld countenance. I silently fed my heart with its despair. A light rustle startled me. Ready for flight I threw round me a hurried glance; I saw no one, but in the sunny sand there glided past me a human shadow, not unlike my own, which, wandering there alone, seemed to have escaped from its possessor. There awoke in me a mighty yearning. "Shadow," said I, "dost thou seek thy master? I will be he," and I sprang forward to seize it. I thought that if I succeeded in treading on it so that its feet touched mine, it probably would remain hanging there, and in time accommodate itself to me. The shadow, on my moving, fled before me, and I was compelled to begin a strenuous chase of the light fugitive, for which the thought of rescuing myself from my fearful condition could alone have endowed me with the requisite vigor. It flew toward a wood, at a great distance, in which I must, of necessity, have lost it. I perceived this--a horror convulsed my heart, inflamed my desire, added wings to my speed; I gained evidently on the shadow, I came continually nearer, I must certainly reach it. Suddenly it stopped, and turned toward me. Like a lion on its prey, I shot with a mighty spring forward to make seizure of it--and dashed unexpectedly against a hard and bodily object. Invisibly I received the most unprecedented blows on the ribs that mortal man probably ever received. The effect of the terror in me was convulsively to close my arms, and firmly to inclose that which stood unseen before me. In the rapid transaction I plunged forward to the ground, but backward and under me was a man whom I had embraced and who now first became visible. The whole occurrence then became very naturally explicable to me. The man must have carried the invisible bird's nest which renders him who holds it, but not his shadow, imperceptible, and had now cast it away. I glanced round, soon discovered the shadow of the invisible nest itself, leaped up and toward it, and did not miss the precious prize. Invisible and shadowless, I held the nest in my hand.