'We never talk with human creatures,' said the shrub.

That was the last thing he heard; everything remained silent. Only the broom-shrubs sighed in the light evening breeze.

'Am I then a man?' thought Johannes. 'No! it cannot be, it cannot be! I will not be a man! I hate men!'

He was tired and sick at heart. He lay down at the edge of the meadow, on the soft grey moss which gave out a strong, damp scent.

'Now I cannot find my way back, and shall never see Robinetta again.

Shall I not die if I have not Robinetta? Shall I live and grow to be a man--a man like those others who laughed at me?'

On a sudden he saw once more the two white b.u.t.terflies which came flying towards him from the side where the sun was setting. He watched them anxiously; would they show him the way? They fluttered over his head, sometimes close together and sometimes far apart, flitting about as if in whimsical play. By degrees they went farther and farther from the sun, and vanished at last over the ridge of the sand-hills towards the wood, where only the topmost boughs were now red in the evening glow which blazed out brightly from beneath the long dark levels of cloud.

Johannes rose and went after them, but as they flew up over the first trees he saw that a black shadow followed them and overtook them with noiseless flight. The next instant they were gone. The black shade pounced swiftly down on them, and Johannes in terror covered his face with his hands.

'Well, my little friend, what have you to cry about?' said a sharp mocking voice close at hand. Johannes had seen a big bat coming towards him, but when he now looked up a little black dwarf not much taller than himself was standing on the sand-hill. He had a large head with big ears which stuck out dark against the bright evening sky; a lean shape and thin legs. Johannes could see nothing of his face but the small twinkling eyes.

'Have you lost anything, my little fellow? Can I help you seek it?' said he. But Johannes shook his head in silence.

'Look here. Would you like to have these?' he began again, opening his hand. In it Johannes saw something white which still moved a little.

This was the two white b.u.t.terflies, their crushed and broken wings quivering in their death-struggle. Johannes shuddered as though some one had blown against the nape of his neck, and he looked up in alarm at the strange being.

'Who are you?' he asked.

'You would like to know my name? Well, call me Pluizer[1]--simply Pluizer. I have other prettier names, but you would not understand them yet.'

'Are you a man?'

'Better and better! Well, I have arms and legs and a head--see what a head--and the boy asks me whether lama man! Why, Johannes, Johannes!'

And the mannikin laughed with a shrill piercing note.

'How do you know who I am?' asked Johannes.

'Oh, that, to me, is a mere trifle. I know a great deal more than that.

I know whence you have come and what you came to do. I know a wonderful deal--almost everything.'

'Ah, Master Pluizer----'

'Pluizer, Pluizer--without any fine words.'

'Then do you know anything----' but Johannes was suddenly silent. 'He is a man,' thought he.

'Of the little key, do you mean? Why, to be sure!'

'But I did not think that any man could know about that.'

'Foolish boy! Besides, Wistik has told me all about it.'

'Then do you know Wistik too?'

'Oh yes! One of my best friends--and I have many friends. But I know it without Wistik. I know a great deal more than Wistik. Wistik is a very good fellow--but stupid, uncommonly stupid. Now, I am not! Far from it!'

And Pluizer tapped his big head with his lean little hand. 'Do you know, Johannes,' he went on, 'what Wistik's great defect is?--but you must never tell him, for he would be very angry.'

'Well, what is it?' said Johannes.

'He does not exist. That is a great defect, but he does not admit it.

And he says the same of me, that I do not exist. But that is a lie. I not exist, indeed! What next, I wonder?'

And Pluizer put the b.u.t.terflies into his satchel, and suddenly turning a somersault stood before Johannes on his head. Then, with a hideous grin, he stuck out a vile long tongue. Johannes, who did not feel at all at his ease alone with this strange being in the growing dusk on the deserted sand-hills, now fairly quaked with fear.

'This is a delightful manner of surveying the world,' said Pluizer, still upside down. 'If you like I will teach you to do it. You see everything much clearer, and more life-like.' And he flourished his little legs in the air and waltzed round on his hands. As the red light fell on his inverted face Johannes thought it perfectly horrible; those little eyes twinkled in the glow and showed the whites at the lower edge where it is not generally visible.

'You see, in this position the clouds seem to be the ground and the earth the top of the world. It is just as easy to maintain that as the converse. There is really no above or below. A very pretty place to walk on those clouds must be!'

Johannes looked up at the long stretches of cloud. They looked to him like a ploughed land, with red furrows, as though blood welled up from it. Just over the pool yawned the gate of the cloud-grotto.

'Can any one go there and enter in?' he asked.

'What nonsense!' said Pluizer, suddenly standing on his feet again, to Johannes's great relief, 'Nonsense! If you were there you would find it just the same as here, and it would look as beautiful as that further on again. But in those lovely clouds it is all foggy and grey and cold.'

'I do not believe you,' cried Johannes. 'Now I see you really are a man.'

'Come, come! You do not believe me, my little friend, because I am a man? And what sort of creature are you then, I should like to know?'

'O Pluizer! Am I, too, really a man?'

'What do you suppose? An elf? Elves are never in love.' And Pluizer unexpectedly sat down on the ground at Johannes's feet with his leg crossed under him, staring at him with a villainous grin. Johannes was unutterably embarra.s.sed and uncomfortable under his gaze, and wished he could escape or become invisible. But he could not even take his eyes off him. 'Only men fall in love, Johannes, d'ye hear! And so much the better, or there would be none left by this time. And you are in love like the best of them, although you are but a little fellow. Of whom are you thinking at this moment?'

'Of Robinetta,' whispered Johannes, hardly above his breath.

'Whom do you most long for?'

'Robinetta.'

'Without whom do you think you could not live?' Johannes's lips moved silently: 'Robinetta.'

'Well then, youngster,' grinned Pluizer, 'what made you fancy that you could be an elf? Elves do not love the daughters of men.'

'But it was Windekind,' Johannes stammered out in his bewilderment. But Pluizer flew into a terrible rage and his bony fingers gripped Johannes by the ears.

'What folly is this? Would you try to frighten me with that whippersnapper thing? He is a greater simpleton than Wistik--much greater. He knows nothing at all. And what is worse, he does not exist in any sense, and never has existed. I only exist, do you understand?

And if you do not believe me, I will let you feel what I am.' And he shook the hapless Johannes by the ears.

Johannes cried out--

'But I have known him such a long time, and have travelled such a long way with him!'

'You dreamed it, I tell you. Where are the rose bush and the little key, hey? But you are not dreaming now. Do you feel that?'