heart was not yet wholly subdued, he raised his eyes to her face.  Oh, how beautiful she was!  Her love and eager desire to win him had flushed her clear olive skin with rich red colour; out of her sweet red lips, half parted, came her warm breath on his cheek, more fragrant than wild flowers; and her large dark eyes were gazing down into his with such a tenderness in them that Martin, seeing it, felt a strange little shudder pass through him, and scarcely knew whether to think it pleasant or painful.  “Dear child, I love you so much,” she spoke, “will you not call me mother?”

Dropping his eyes and with trembling lips, feeling a little ashamed at being conquered at last, he whispered “Mother.”

She raised him in her arms and pressed him to her bosom, wrapping her hair like a warm mantle round him; and in less than one minute, overcome by fatigue, he fell fast asleep in her arms.

CHAPTER XII

THE LITTLE PEOPLE UNDERGROUND

When he awoke Martin found himself lying on a soft downy bed in a dim stone chamber, and feeling silky hair over his cheek and neck and arms, he knew that he was still with his new strange mother, the beautiful Lady of the Mountain.  She, seeing him awake, took him up in her arms, and holding him against her bosom, carried him through a long winding stone passage, and out into the bright morning sunlight.  There by a small spring of clearest water that gushed from the rock she washed his scratched and bruised skin, and rubbed it with sweet-smelling unguents, and gave him food and drink.  The great spotted beast sat by them all the time, purring like a cat, and at intervals he tried to entice Martin to leave the woman’s lap and play with him.  But she would not let him out of her arms:  all day she nursed and fondled him as if he had been a helpless babe instead of the sturdy little run-away and adventurer he had proved himself to be.  She also made him tell her the story of how he had got lost and of all the wonderful things that had happened to him in his wanderings in the wilderness—­the people of the Mirage, and old Jacob and the savages, the great forest, the serpent, the owl, the wild horses and wild man, and the black people of the sky.  But it was of the Mirage and the procession of lovely beings about which he spoke most and questioned her.

“Do you think it was all a dream?” he kept asking her, “the Queen and all those people?”

She was vexed at the question, and turning her face away, refused to answer him.  For though at all other times, and when he spoke of other things, she was gentle and loving in her manner, the moment he spoke of the Queen of the Mirage and the gifts she had bestowed on him, she became impatient, and rebuked him for saying such foolish things.

At length she spoke and told him that it was a dream, a very very idle dream, a dream that was not worth dreaming; that he must never speak of it again, never think of it, but forget it, just as he had forgotten all the other vain silly dreams he had ever had.  And having said this much a little sharply, she smiled again and fondled him, and promised that when he next slept he should have a good dream, one worth the dreaming, and worth remembering and talking about.