At lengthening intervals he was measured, but now a little perfunctorily. Before long they would lose interest, and there would be no more visits. Whatever they had had in mind—entertainment, the pursuit of knowledge, the pleasure of being busied about something—they had intended him no harm, no good. It was impersonal, the traffic of water flowing over a stone. And one day, when they were finished with him, he felt a pat on his shoulder. It intended him no harm, no good—and it almost destroyed him. It was as if he were falling apart with happiness. For the first time, a fairy hand had rested on him with the wastefulness of a caress.

He froze, he burned; he was immortally awake, he was overwhelmingly sleepy; he experienced all the vicissitudes of love simultaneously. Even when he had dwindled down to his ordinary self, his mind had been jolted to a different tilt, and took a different retrospect. If he had offended them and so put himself in their power, they had shown a most moderate resentment, imposing nothing worse than solitude—which he had always preferred to company—and cobweb fetters. They had washed him, fed him, bedded him in a comfortable thickness of fern; their hands had always been gentle. Where was the farm animal who could say that of a mortal master? Why had he wasted all these months in being unappreciative?

He detached his fetters, coiled them up, laid them in a corner, and walked easily to the door. As he expected, it was locked. Remembering his mortal weight he put his shoulder to the door and forced it open. Behind rose a winding stairway, its steps very shallow. He mounted it, rising into gradual warmth and light, hearing the splash and gurgle of water sounding on in its solitude. The stair ended in an anteroom where two fairies were playing beggar-my-neighbour, as intently as though crowns and kingdoms depended on it. He stood for a while, watching the fall of the cards; they were the same as any other cards, but smaller and more brightly painted. These were the first fairies he had ever seen. He saw them without surprise or particular elation. The fortune of the game wound and unwound, governed by the chance of a card. The fortune of his game had brought him fairies—but he had always known fairies were in the pack. He walked into the adjoining room. It was a large room, lit and scented with bayberry candles, and an assembly of fairies moved about in it, moving with such small gliding steps that they seemed to melt rather than move. Angus was not far from the mark: taller than a tall thistle, he had said. Well-grown thistles on the family estate must have reached a good four foot; he could remember them overtopping him when he was a child, and how majestically they fell when his father slashed them. He stationed himself in a recess, to be out of the way, and undisturbed by being noticed.