She held him away from her, seating him on her knees, to look at his face, and said, “For oh, dear little Martin, you are lovely and sweet to look at, and you are mine, my own sweet child, and so long as you live with me on the hills, and love me and eall me mother, you shall be happy, and everything you see, sleeping and waking, shall seem strange and beautiful.”

It was quite true that he was sweet to look at, very pretty with his rosy-white skin deepening to red on his cheeks; and his hair curling all over his head was of a bright golden chestnut colour; and his eyes were a very bright blue, and looked keen and straight at you just like a bird’s eyes, that seem to be thinking of nothing, and yet seeing everything.

After this Martin was eager to go to sleep at once and have the promised dream, but his very eagerness kept him wide awake all day, and even after going to bed in that dim chamber in the heart of the hill, it was a long time before he dropped off.  But he did not know that he had fallen asleep:  it seemed to him that he was very wide awake, and that he heard a voice speaking in the chamber, and that he started up to listen to it.

“Do you not know that there are things just as strange underground as above it?” said the voice.

Martin could not see the speaker, but he answered quite boldly:  “No—­there’s nothing underground except earth and worms and roots.  I’ve seen it when they’ve been digging.”

“Oh, but there is!” said the voice.  “You can see for yourself.  All you’ve got to do is to find a path leading down, and to follow it.  There’s a path over there just in front of you; you can see the opening from where you are lying.”

He looked, and sure enough there was an opening, and a dim passage running down through the solid rock.  Up he jumped, fired at the prospect of seeing new and wonderful things, and without looking any more to see who had spoken to him, he ran over to it.  The passage had a smooth floor of stone, and sloped downward into the earth, and went round and round in an immense spiral; but the circles were so wide that Martin scarcely knew that he was not travelling in a straight line.  Have you by chance ever seen a buzzard, or stork, or vulture, or some other great bird, soaring upwards into the sky in wide circles, each circle taking it higher above the earth, until it looked like a mere black speck in the vast blue heavens, and at length disappeared altogether?  Just in that way, going round and round in just such wide circles, lightly running all the time, with never a pause to rest, and without feeling in the least tired, Martin went on, only down and down and further down, instead of up and up like the soaring bird, until he was as far under the mountain as ever any buzzard or crane or eagle soared above it.