Page 30 - Adventures in shadow-land

The Gift of ike Fountain, 27

reached the fountain's brink, they were all gone,

and no trace of them was left. As she looted at
the waters, they seemed to become solid, and

shape themselves into an image carvcd as it were
out of pure, shining gold, yet glowing with many

colors; and then, slowly, slowly, with a sound
like distant music, the beautiful, wonderful thing

began to sink into the earth; and Eva, her tiny
hands clasped, her fair cheeks flushed, her soft

blue eyes sparkling, stood in silence and looked.
And just as the magic fountain, which, when the

child ftrst came up to it, had been so high that
its waters played far above her head, had sunk so

low that Eva, had she wished, might have laid
her hand upon its summit, she saw, cradled as it
were, on the very crest of what had been the

golden water, a tiny figure; not like one of the

elves which had danced on the rain bow-bubbles,
but like a sleeping child, which Eva thought, at
firsts was only a doll lying there, in its green-

and-scarlet velvet dress ; and for a moment the
slow, descending motion of the fountain stopped,

and Eva heard these words, in the same voice
which had spoken before through the lips of the