Thro’ the sultry summer hours My shrill voice was ringing; Now, when cold has killed the flowers, By the fire I’m singing. You don’t understand my song, Tho’ so bright and airy; For to mortals you belong, You are not a faery. Living now the earth upon, Oft my life’s imperilled; But at court of Oberon, I’m the faeries’ herald. If you caught me you would say, “In the fire stick it; In the house it shall not stay, Noisy, noisy cricket.” Therefore by the Faery King, I to hide am bidden, And you only hear me sing When I’m closely hidden First of all, it sounded as if only one cricket was singing, then a second seemed to join in, afterwards a third and fourth, until the whole forest appeared to be full of crickets. Forest?—yes!—I was now in an old, old forest, for, as I listened to the cricket’s song, the twigs on the logs became fresh and green, then seemed to grow larger and larger, until they hid the red light of the fire, and branched out with great leafy boughs into the room. I looked up in surprise, and saw the green branches, high above my head, waving in the soft wind, and I could hear the singing of unseen birds sound through the chirping of the crickets. Under my feet, instead of a carpet, there was now fresh green turf covered with daisies, and my arm-chair was a chair no longer, but the mossy trunk of a fallen tree. The red light glimmered behind the leaves, as though the fire was still there, but I knew in some strange way that it was not the fire, but the crimson glare of the sunset. A great wave of phantasy seemed to roll through the forest, and I started to my feet, as the crickets finished singing, with a curious sense of wonderful knowledge and vague longings. “Dear me!” I said to myself; “this must be Faeryland.” “Yes, it is Faeryland,” piped a shrill voice, which seemed to come from the ground. “This is the Forest of Enchantment.” [Illustration: “YES, IT IS FAERYLAND,” PIPED A SHRILL VOICE] I looked down without astonishment, for in Faeryland no one is astonished at the strange things which take place, and saw an old, old little man, with a long white beard, sitting astride the stem of a flower, which kept swaying up and down like a rocking-horse. He was dressed in bright green, with the inverted purple cup of a Canterbury bell on his head, and if he had not spoken I would not have known he was there, so much did his clothes and cap resemble the surrounding green grass and coloured flowers. “Goblin?” I asked quickly; for, you see, he looked so old and ugly that I thought he must be one of the underground faeries.