light was dearer to them than anything, even at night; and while the other flowers slept, they gazed unwearied on the light, and drank it in with eager adoration—­ sun, and moon, and star light.  And the light had so thoroughly purified them, that they had not sucked in poisonous juices like the yellow flowers of the earth, but sweet odours for sick and fainting hearts, and oil of potent ethereal virtue for the weak and the wounded; and at length, when their autumn came, they did not, like the others, wither and sink down, leaf and flower, to be swallowed up by the darksome earth, but shook off their earthly garment and mounted aloft, into the clear air.  But there it was so wondrously bright, that sight failed them; and when they came to themselves again, they were fire-flies, each sitting on a withered flower-stalk.

And now the Child liked the bright-eyed flies better than ever; and he talked a little longer with them, and inquired why they showed themselves so much more in spring.  They did it, they said, in the hope that their gold-green radiance might allure their cousins, the flowers, to the pure love of light.

CHAPTER X.

During this conversation the dragon-fly had been preparing a bed for her host.  The moss upon which the Child sat had grown a foot high behind his back, out of pure joy; but the dragon-fly and her sisters had so revelled upon it, that it was now laid at its length along the cave.  The dragon-fly had awakened every spider in the neighbourhood out of her sleep, and when they saw the brilliant light, they had set to work spinning so industriously that their web hung down like a curtain before the mouth of the cave.  But as the Child saw the ant peeping up at him, he entreated the fire-flies not to deprive themselves any longer of their merry games in the wood on his account.  And the dragon-fly and her sisters raised the curtain till the Child had laid him down to rest, and then let it fall again, that the mischievous gnats might not get in to disturb his slumbers.

The Child laid himself down to sleep, for he was very tired; but he could not sleep, for his couch of moss was quite another thing than his little bed, and the cave was all strange to him.

He turned himself on one side and then on the other, and, as nothing would do, he raised himself and sat upright to wait till sleep might choose to come.  But sleep would not come at all; and the only wakeful eyes in the whole wood were the Child’s.  For the harebells had rung themselves weary, and the fire-flies had flown about till they were tired, and even the dragon-fly, who would fain have kept watch in front of the cave, had dropped sound asleep.

The wood grew stiller and stiller; here and there fell a dry leaf which had been driven from its old dwelling place by a fresh one; here and there a young bird gave a soft chirp when its mother squeezed it in the nest; and from time to time a gnat hummed for a minute or two in the curtain, till a spider crept on tip-toe along its web, and gave him such a gripe in the wind-pipe as soon spoiled his trumpeting.