Ravenshoe Volume 4 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: steps, and diving in among the fretting horses and blazing carriage-lamps, disappeared into the darkness and the drifting snow. CHAPTER III. The lights of the blazing windows of the palace guided him a little at first; but as the sound of the music died upon his ear the light died away also, and he found himself alone in the dark in the lower and poorer quarter of the town, with no light but his ruby. There was no doubt about his way, for the ruby was very bright now, and before him, pressed firmly into the snow, were the naked footprints of the Boy in Grey. The Prince walked very fast, and peered before him into the darkness for a glimpse of the sapphire, but there was nothing to be seen. The cowering poverty around him was asleep and silent, and he soon cleared the City Augusta, and got into the great forest which lies beyond it. And which forest is Fairyland: " Oh ! see you not that bonny road That winds along the fernie brae ? Oh ! yon's the road to Fairyland, Where thou and I this e'en must gae." In that forest there is no snow or frost at any time of the year: nobody ever feels pain in Fairyland, and nobody ever cries there. There is no hunger or thirst in Fairyland. Every one is happy in Fairyland; but God's mercy on the boy or man who goes to sleep there and thinks that it is heaven ! As our noble old Bunyan teaches us, there is a " bye-way to hell out of it." And so the Prince found himself at once in a warm beautiful summer's night with a bright moon, which would have rejoiced him extremely, only it got so very difficult to follow the tread of the Boy in Grey through the grass and the flowers. It is always easy enough in the snow; any one can do it then, but only a few can follow his footsteps in the summer-time. In a narrow pleasant path among ...