Reor was permitted to see the joyous close of the flower adventure.  He felt behind him a flutter as of the lightest wind and saw a white butterfly flitting about in the dimness between the thick trunks.  He flew hither and thither in an uneasy quest, as if uncertain of the way.  Nor was he alone; butterfly after butterfly glimmered in the darkness, until at last there was a host of white-winged honey seekers.  But the first was the leader, and he found the flowers, guided by their fragrance.  After him the whole butterfly host came storming.  It threw itself down among the longing flowers, as the conqueror throws himself on his booty.  Like a snowfall of white wings it sank down over them.  And there was feasting and drinking on every flowercluster.  The woods were full of silent rejoicing.

Reor went on, but now the honey-sweet fragrance seemed to follow him wherever he went.  And he felt that in the wood was hidden a longing, stronger than that of the flowers, that something there drew him to itself, just as the flowers lured the butterflies.  He went forward with a quiet joy in his heart, as if he was expecting a great, unknown happiness.  His only fear was lest he should not be able to find the way to that which longed for him.

In front of him, on the narrow path, crawled a white snake.  He bent down to pick up the luck-bringing animal, but the snake glided out of his hands and up the path.  There it coiled itself and lay still; but when the huntsman again tried to catch it, glided slippery as ice between his fingers.

Reor now grew eager to possess the wisest of beasts.  He ran after the snake, but was not able to reach it, and the latter lured him away from the path into the trackless forest.

It was overgrown with pines, and in such places one seldom finds grassy ground.  But now the dry moss and brown pine-needles suddenly disappeared, the stiff cranberry bushes vanished, and Reor felt under foot velvet like turf.  Over the green carpet trembled flower clusters, light as down, on bending stems, and between the long, narrow leaves could he seen the half-opened blossoms of the red gillyflower.  It was only a little spot, and over it spread the gnarled, red-brown branches of the lofty pines, with bunches of close-growing needles.  Through these the sun’s rays could find many paths to the ground, and there was suffocating heat.

In the midst of the little meadow a cliff rose perpendicularly out of the ground.  It lay in sharp sunshine, and the mossy stones were plainly visible, and in the fresh fractures, where the winter’s frost had last loosened some mighty blocks, the long stalks of ferns clung with their brown roots in the earth-filled cracks, and on the inch-wide projections a grass-green moss lifted on needle-like stems the little, grey caps, which concealed its spores.

The cliff seemed in all ways like every other cliff, but Reor noticed instantly that he had come upon the gable-wall of a giant’s house, and he discovered under moss and lichen the great hinges on which the mountain’s granite door swung.