“But _how_ do you know that these things are so?” asked the boy. “How do I know that I am alive?” answered the flax-fairy in a murmur. Fainter grew the voices and the vision faded from the boy’s sight. He knew not how long it was he stayed there, but after awhile he awoke with a start to find that Eline was no longer with him, and that he had slept among the flax in the sunshine. IX “It must have been a dream!” he said. But he did not believe it was a dream—for all his words. And really the flowers seemed to him to bear a new life after that wonderful vision which came to him when Eline gave him for an hour the seeing eye. Working with the others joyfully and happily without a moment’s pause or one thought of failure, they saw quickly growing an immense heap of beautiful fine white thread. The children had helped the flax to grow and now in turn it aided them to clear more ground. For in no long time all was finished and before them they had a mighty rope growing greater every day under their Leader’s eye. One strange thing there was about the rope. For there were golden threads interwoven which the children did not remember having seen among the flax. And they wondered. But Eline only said “It is golden flax.” Whatever it was, it shone brightly in the sun until it looked like a ray of real sunlight in the rope. [Illustration: MAKING ROPE] One little child said: “It looks like a brother to the sun!” “Perhaps it is,” said Eline, and smiled. The work grew apace. And the play grew apace, because the children scarcely knew which was work and which was play. They seemed to have found something better than both. Stone after stone, rock after rock, was encircled with the cord and triumphantly drawn by that merry army of children to the edge of the plain. Clearer and clearer grew the space. Where before the stones had been, little pools of water formed, while round them grew masses of beautiful flowers, among which was a new crop of the little blue flax, stronger and better grown than any that had been there before. Gradually there grew up a great wall of rock around the plain where the boulders were drawn by the children, for each was taken to its nearest boundary, as Eline told them this would be the simplest way to clear the plain. Some mighty rocks yet remained in the center of the plain but the children had so seen the wisdom of their Leader that they doubted not that these too would be removed without difficulty, although how this was to be done they could not tell. And as the work was nearing an end they did as their Leader bid them in perfect trust. Actually they put their ropes around a rock which some said was like a small mountain. They pulled with a will, but the rock moved not. Still they pulled willingly and with all their might, for now they had grown strong until they scarcely knew their own powers.