The Story Without an End (Austin, 1913)/Chapter 10
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 tiptoe along its web, and gave him such a gripe in the wind-pipe as soon spoiled his trumpeting.
And the deeper the silence became, the more intently did the Child listen, and at last the slightest sound thrilled him from head to foot. At length, all was still as death in the wood, and the world seemed as if it never would wake again. The Child bent forward to see whether it were as dark abroad as in the cave, but he saw nothing save the pitch-dark night, who had wrapped everything in her thick veil. Yet as he looked upwards his eyes met the friendly glance of two or three stars, and this was a most joyful surprise to him, for he felt himself no longer so entirely alone. The stars were, indeed, far, far away, but yet he knew them, and they knew him, for they looked into his eyes.
The Child’s whole soul was fixed in his gaze, and it seemed to him as if he must needs fly out of the darksome cave thither, where the stars were beaming with such pure and serene light: and he felt how poor and lowly he was, when he thought of their brilliancy; and how cramped and fettered, when he thought of their free unbounded course along the heavens.