“Years went by, and the Hill became crowded with the White Men’s ugly wigwams. The springs still bubbled, but it was a sad song that they sang, for everything was changed. But that was not the worst. Came a day when a man built a house over my very spring! He shut in the bubbling water under a roof, between four ugly walls, where the blue sky could no longer shine upon it nor the fresh air visit it freely! Alas! Would that I had escaped before then. I might have gone earlier, though it would have been sorrowful to desert my lonely spring. But I had not guessed what was about to happen until it was too late. I had not thought that even a White Man could be so cruel as to wall up a living spring. I was asleep under the moss and ferns when they raised the roof over me. Alas! I did not even waken at the sound of their wicked hammers. But when I opened my eyes it was too late. There was a screen between me and the sky!” “Why did you not run away?” asked Rob sympathetically. “Oh, you do not understand,” answered the Fairy with a sad little smile. “I might have escaped at any time before the roof covered me. But as soon as there was a roof above my head, and four walls rose around me, I was under the magic spell of the White Men. I could not go away, even though the doors and windows were yet yawning holes. I must remain, even as the well must remain, until some one should take pity on me and set me free.” “And could you find no one to do that in all those years?” cried Rob. “Alas! No. The people who lived in the house were dull folk who did not believe in Fairies. For many years and many years I have remained shut up in the darkness of this cellar, pining in the deserted well. It is quite useless and forgotten. Long ago the ferns and mosses died, and I have no green thing left to love, nothing beautiful to see.” “Poor Fairy!” said Rob, and the tears stood in his eyes. “I have cried, I have called, I have knocked on the walls of the well,” said the Fairy, “but no one has seemed to hear my voice. Or if folk heard they have not understood. Years ago some one who stepped as you step, whose voice sounded like yours--I never saw his face--used to come sometimes and listen at the well, and I heard him wish and wonder. But that was all.” “It must have been my father!” exclaimed Rob, remembering what had been said at the breakfast table. “But he could not understand what I tried to tell him,” went on the Fairy. “He wondered and walked about, but he always went away without doing anything. It was as if I spoke a foreign language. But you see I do not. You understand me quite well, is it not so?” “Oh, yes!” cried Rob. “And yet it is very strange. It is not language such as others speak. It is like trickling water that makes words.”