‘Exactly,’ said Puck.  ’Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don’t care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors?  Butterfly wings, indeed!  I’ve seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou’-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright.  Out they’d go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they’d be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again.  Butterfly-wings!  It was Magic—­Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it.  And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!’

‘Splendid,’ said Dan, but Una shuddered.

’I’m glad they’re gone, then; but what made the People of the Hills go away?’ Una asked.

’Different things.  I’ll tell you one of them some day—­the thing that made the biggest flit of any,’ said Puck.  ’But they didn’t all flit at once.  They dropped off, one by one, through the centuries.  Most of them were foreigners who couldn’t stand our climate. They flitted early.’

‘How early?’ said Dan.

’A couple of thousand years or more.  The fact is they began as Gods.  The Phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the Gauls, and the Jutes, and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles brought more when they landed.  They were always landing in those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they always brought their Gods with them.  England is a bad country for Gods.  Now, I began as I mean to go on.  A bowl of porridge, a dish of milk, and a little quiet fun with the country folk in the lanes was enough for me then, as it is now.  I belong here, you see, and I have been mixed up with people all my days.  But most of the others insisted on being Gods, and having temples, and altars, and priests, and sacrifices of their own.’

‘People burned in wicker baskets?’ said Dan.  ’Like Miss Blake tells us about?’

‘All sorts of sacrifices,’ said Puck.  ’If it wasn’t men, it was horses, or cattle, or pigs, or metheglin—­that’s a sticky, sweet sort of beer. I never liked it.  They were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the Old Things.  But what was the result?  Men don’t like being sacrificed at the best of times; they don’t even like sacrificing their farm-horses.  After a while, men simply left the Old Things alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the Old Things had to scuttle out and pick up a living as they could.  Some of them took to hanging about trees, and hiding in graves and groaning o’ nights.  If they groaned loud enough and long enough they might frighten a poor countryman into sacrificing a hen, or leaving a pound of butter