Kisington Town

by Abbie Farwell Brown

Thereupon Harold began to read in his best manner the gentle tale of The Hermit Gnome.

XII: THE HERMIT GNOME

Long, long ago, in the farthest corner of the Kingdom, was a mountain covered with a pathless forest. Human folk never came this way. The shadows of the forest were gloomy, and the sounds of the forest were strange, and the name of the forest was full of dread. Men called it the Great Fear. For it was here that the Gnomes lived and did their wicked dealings.

The Gnomes were ugly and deformed and black; no larger than the Elf-People, but instead of Fairy kindness their minds plotted evil. They lived in the hollows and cracks of the mountain. Some of them camped out under the great, poisonous toadstools which they loved, as they loved everything dangerous to man. And all day long they dreamed, all night long they wrought mischief. They were at the bottom of many of the evil happenings in Kisington and elsewhere. For they could wreak their evil magic from a long distance.

Now, of the race of Gnomes there was one apart. He was a queer little fellow, the oldest, the ugliest, and the crookedest of them all. His face was wrinkled like a brown walnut; and his little misshapen body was bent under a hump which was the biggest part of him. But his mind was not evil. He was quite harmless and mild and lazy, and he hated the dire doings of his fellows who would neither mind their own business nor leave him to his.

For centuries things went on from bad to worse in the Great Fear. At last the Old Gnome could bear it no longer.

"I am very old and tired," he said. "It is almost time for me to curl up in the long sleep. But I cannot sleep here! I should have bad dreams. I will leave the Great Fear, which owes none of its name to me. I will go and become a Hermit, as men say."

So spoke the queer little Gnome. And one bright noon when all the other Gnomes were dreaming with shut eyes,--for they hated the daylight,--he stumbled away as fast as his crooked little legs could take him south from the Great Fear. Now, beyond this was a meadow, which was the borderland across which human folk dared not approach the haunt of the Gnomes. And beyond the meadow again was an Ancient Wood, which, though he did not know it, was on the outskirts of Derrydown. Thither the Old Gnome betook himself, and found it very good indeed. Like the Great Fear it was dense and shadowy and cool. In places it was very dark. But there was scarcely a spot whence you could not, when the sun shone, catch speckled gleams of gold upon the moss; or, when the moon beamed, spy a wealth of filtered silver. For the Ancient Wood was intersected hither and yon by paths of the woodchoppers. And sun and moon love to peer down through the man-made windows in the green roof of trees and beautify the ways which human feet have trod.

The Old Gnome peered and pried about the Ancient Wood, seeking a hermitage. At last he came upon the hollow stump of a tree, hidden in a clump of feathery fern. It was thatched with green lichens without, and carpeted within in a mossy pattern of green and gray and scarlet. Little hard mushrooms, growing shelf-wise one above another, made a winding staircase up to the doorway. Portieres of finest spider-wrought tapestry swayed before door and window and draped the dark-hued walls; while across one corner hung a hammock of heavier web, the very thing for a weary Gnome's resting-place.