Karl used to feed his goats in the ruins of an old castle, high up above the stream.  Day after day one of his herd used to disappear, coming back in the evening to join the homeward procession, very fat and well-liking.  So Karl set himself to watch, and saw that the goat slipped in at a hole in the masonry.  He enlarged the hole, and presently was able to creep into a dark passage.  He made his way along, and soon heard a sound like a falling hailstorm.  He groped his way thither, and found the goat, in the dim light, feeding on grains of corn which came splashing down from above.  He looked and listened, and, from the sounds of stamping and neighing overhead, he became aware that the grain was failing through the chinks of a paved floor from a stable inside the hill.  I forget at this moment what happened next—­the story is rich in inconsequent details—­but Karl shortly heard a sound like thunder, which he discerned at last to be persons laughing and shouting and running in the vaulted passages.  He stole on, and found, in an open, grassy place, great merry men playing at bowls.  He was welcomed and set down in a chair, though he could not even lift one of the bowls when invited to join in the game.  A dwarf brought him wine in a cup, which he drank, and presently he fell asleep.

When he woke, all was silent and still; he made his way back; the goats were gone, and it was the early morning, all misty and dewy among the ruins, when he squeezed out of the hole.

He felt strangely haggard and tired, and reached the village only to find that seventy years had elapsed, and that he was an old and forgotten man, with no place for him.  He had lost his home, and though there were one or two old grandfathers, spent and dying, who remembered the day when he was lost, and the search made for him, yet now there was no room for the old man.  The gap had filled up, life had flowed on.  They had grieved for him, but they did not want him back.  He disturbed their arrangements; he was another useless mouth to feed.

The pretty old story is full of parables, sad and sweet.  But the kernel of the tale is a warning to all who, for any wilfulness or curiosity, however romantic or alluring the quest, forfeit their place for an instant in the world.  You cannot return.  Life accommodates itself to its losses, and however sincerely a man may be lamented, yet if he returns, if he tries to claim his place, he is in the way, de trop.  No one has need of him.

An artist has most need of this warning, because he of all men is tempted to enter the dark place in the hill, to see wonderful things and to drink the oblivious wine.  Let him rather keep his hold on the world, at whatever sacrifice.  Because by the time that he has explored the home of the merry giants, and dreamed his dream, the world to which he tries to tell the vision will heed it not, but treat it as a fanciful tale.