Chapter II

Peterkin was very sleepy, but before his head sank back to the pillow he saw something which caused him to hold his breath, and made his eyes grow so round and large that they were like the little pools one sees on the hill-side.

Every here and there he saw tiny yellow and green lives slipping and sliding along and in and out of the branches of the poplar. Sometimes they were all pale yellow, like gold; sometimes of a shimmering green; sometimes so dusky that only by their shining eyes were they visible. At first he could not clearly distinguish these unfamiliar denizens of the great poplar. The vast green pyramid seemed innumerously alive. Then gradually he saw that each delicate shape was like a human being: little men and women, but smaller than the smallest children, smaller even than dolls. They were all laughing and chasing each other to and fro. Some slid swiftly down an outspread branch, and then dropped on to a green leafy billow or plunged into an inscrutable maze: others swung by the little crook at the end of each leaf, and laughed as they were blown this way and that by puffs of air: and a few daring ones climbed to the topmost sprays of the topmost boughs and held up tiny white hands like daisies. These wished to clasp the moonshine. As well might a fish try to catch the moon-dazzle on the water! No wonder Peterkin laughed.

Ever and again a delicate sweet singing came from the moonshine-folk. Peterkin listened, but could hear no words he knew. Perhaps there were no words at all, or mayhap he himself knew too few. But the singing was strangely familiar. Sometimes when mother sang, surely he had heard it: as far back, farther back, than memory could take him, he had heard some echo of it. Cradle-sweet it was, that dim snatch of a fugitive strain. And, too, had he not heard something of it in the wind, when that went whispering through the grass and in and out of the wild-rose thicket, or when it lifted and waved a great wing and fanned the trees into vast swaying flames of green? Yes, even in the fire he had heard it. When the orange and red flames flickered among the coals, or caught the sap in the pine-logs and grew into yellow and blue with hearts of purple, he had heard a faint far-off music.

Peterkin gave a little gasp when a sudden wave of shadow, trailed across the poplar by a long slow-travelling cloud, swept from bough to bough. It was as though all the singing, laughing, dancing folk had been drowned.

He stared through the darkness, but there was nothing to be seen. He shivered. It was lonely out there. Again he heard a sound as of a remote singing. As before, he could not hear what the words were. But, once more, it was not all unfamiliar. It was sadder than anything that dimly he remembered, save the long mournful crooning of a Gaelic cradle-song, sadder than any flame-whisper in a waning fire, or than any cadence of the wind in the grass, or among the thickets of wild rose.