"I must be clean mazed,"[21] he cried. "I have never got out of my reckoning before, nor missed finding my way to our gate, even when the night has been as dark as pitch. It isn't at all dark to-night; I can see Trevose Head—and yet I can't see my own little gate! But I en't a-going to be done; I'll go round and round this common till I do find my gate."
And round and round the common he went, but find his gate he could not.
Every time he passed the ruins of the church a laugh came up from the pool below the ruins, and once he thought he saw a dancing light on the edge of the pool, where a lot of reeds and rushes were growing.
"The Little Man in the Lantern is about to-night,"[22] he said to himself, as he glanced at the pool. "But I never knew he was given to laughing before."
Once more he went round the common, and when he had passed the ruins he heard giggling and laughing, this time quite close to him; and looking down on the grass, he saw to his astonishment hundreds of Little Men and Little Women with tiny lights in their hands, which they were flinking[23] about as they laughed and giggled.
The Little Men wore stocking-caps, the color of ripe briar berries, and grass-green coats, and the Little Women had on old grandmother cloaks of the same vivid hue as the Wee Men's coats, and they also wore little scarlet hoods.
"I believe the great big chap sees us," said one of the Little Men, catching sight of Jan's astonished face. "He must be Piskey-eyed, and we did not know it."
"Is he really?" cried one of the Dinky[24] Women. "'Tis a pity, but we'll have our game over him just the same."
"That we will," cried all the Little Men and Little Women in one voice; and, forming a ring round the great tall fellow, they began to dance round him, laughing, giggling and flashing up their lights as they danced.
They went round him so fast that poor Jan was quite bewildered, and whichever way he looked there were these Little Men and Little Women giggling up into his bearded face. And when he tried to break through their ring they went before him and behind him, making a game over him.