So saying, he put his pipe to his lips, and striking up a cheerful strain, he set off boldly on the little footway that stretched like a white line across the gloomy heath.
The women, terrified, made the sign of the cross, and hurried down the hill.
But Lao walked straight on without fear, and played meanwhile upon his pipes. As he advanced, his heart grew bolder, his breath more powerful, and the music louder. Already had he crossed just half the common, when he saw the Menhir rising like a phantom in the night, and further on, the dwellings of the Korigans.
Then he seemed to hear an ever-rising murmur. At first it was like the trickling of a rill, then like the rushing of a river, and then the roaring of the sea; and different sounds were mingled in this roar,—sometimes like stifled laughs, then furious hissing, the mutterings of low voices, and the rush of steps upon the withered grass.
Lao began to breathe less freely, and his restless eyes glanced right and left over the common. It was as if the tufts of heath were moving, all seemed alive and whirling in the gloom, all took the form of hideous dwarfs, and voices were distinctly heard. Suddenly the moon rose, and Lao cried aloud.
To left, to right, behind, before, every where, far as the eye could reach, the common was alive with running Korigans. Lao, bewildered, drew back to the Menhir, against which he leant; but the Korigans saw him, and came round with cries like those of grasshoppers.
“It is the famous piper of Cornouaille come hither to play for the Korigans.”
Lao made the sign of the cross; but all the little men surrounded him, and shrieked,
“Thou belongest to us, Lao. Pipe then, thou famous piper, and lead the dance of the Korigans.”
Lao in vain resisted, some magic power mastered him; he felt the pipe approach his lips; he played, he danced, in spite of himself. The Korigans surrounded him with circling bands, and every time he would have paused they cried in chorus,