These lovely meads and plains were, for the most part, all lonesome.  Few of the underground people were to be seen upon them, and those that were just glided across them as if in the greatest hurry.  It very rarely happened that any of them danced out there in the open air.  Sometimes about three of them did so, or, at the most, half a dozen.  John never saw a greater number together.  The meads were never cheerful except when the servants, of whom there might be some hundreds, were let out to walk.  This, however, happened but twice a week, for they were mostly kept employed in the great hall and adjoining apartments or at school.

For John soon found they had schools there also.  He had been there about ten months when one day he saw something snow-white gliding into a rock and disappearing.

“What!” said he to his servant, “are there some of you that wear white like the servants?”

He was informed that there were, but they were few in number, and never appeared at the large tables or the dances, except once a year, on the birthday of the great Hill-king, who dwelt many thousand miles below in the great deep.  These were the oldest among them, some of them many thousand years old, who knew all things and could tell of the beginning of the world, and were called the Wise.  They lived all alone, and only left their chambers to instruct the underground children and the attendants of both sexes, for whom there was a great school.

John was much pleased with this intelligence, and he determined to take advantage of it; so next morning he made his servant conduct him to the school, and was so well pleased with it that he never missed a day going there.  They were there taught reading, writing, and accounts, to compose and relate histories, stories, and many elegant kinds of work, so that many came out of the hills, both men and women, very prudent and knowing people in consequence of what they were taught there.  The biggest, and those of best capacity, received instruction in natural science and astronomy, and in poetry and in riddle-making, arts highly esteemed among the little people.  John was very diligent, and soon became a most clever painter and drawer.  He wrought, too, most ingeniously in gold and silver and stones, and in verse and riddle-making he had no fellow.

John had spent many a happy year here without ever thinking of the upper world, or of those he had left behind, so pleasantly passed the time—­so many agreeable companions had he.

Of all of them there was none of whom he was so fond as of a fair-haired girl named Elizabeth Krabbe.  She was from his own village, and was the daughter of Frederick Krabbe, the minister of Rambin.  She was but four years old when she was taken away, and John had often heard tell of her.  She was not, however, stolen by the little people, but had come into their power in this manner.  One day in summer she and other children ran out into the fields.