‘It must have been my laugh you saw,’ cried the Piskey—’my dear little lost laugh that I have travelled so far to find. Where is it now, Good King Arthur?’
‘It was here not long since,’ answered the bird, who did not deny that he was Arthur the King. ‘Why, there it is quite close to you,’ pointing with his long-pointed beak to the most comical-looking thing you ever saw, on the grass a foot from where the Piskey was standing. ‘It was a laugh gone mad,’ as the chough said.
The Piskey looked behind him, and when he saw the little bit of laughing, grinning absurdity on the grass, he jumped for joy and shrieked: ‘It is my own little laugh that I lost!’
Holding out both his arms, he cried, ‘Oh, dear little laugh, come back to me! Oh, dear little laugh, come back to me!’ And the droll little thing, which was a grin with a laugh and a laugh with a grin, came over to the Piskey, and began to climb up his legs, grinning and doubling itself up with laughter as it climbed, till it reached his chin, when it narrowed itself into a tiny grin and vanished into the Piskey.
The next moment the Piskey was shouting at the top of his voice, ‘I have got my laugh! I have got my laugh!’ and he ran off laughing and dancing to the edge of the cliff and disappeared into the Piskey-hole, and in a few minutes more he was on Castle Gardens in the great Piskey-ring, laughing and dancing and dancing and laughing.
His laugh was so loud and so free that his brother Piskeys heard him from afar, and came running over the cliffs from Bossiney to see what ever had happened.
Little Fiddler Piskey was the first to reach the Gardens, and the first glance at the little whirling figure told him that his little brother had found his laugh; and putting his fiddle in position, he began fiddling away as hard as he could.
As he fiddled, the other Piskeys, including Granfer Piskey, reached the ring, and the next minute they were all dancing and laughing as they had never laughed and danced before; but the one who laughed the heartiest was the little Piskey who had lost and found his laugh.
They danced for a good hour, the little fiddler in their midst fiddling his fiddle, all the while keeping time with his head and foot, heedless that the daylight was driving the darkness away to the country to which it belongs; and King Arthur the Bird flew up on the wall and watched, and the mole who called herself the Lady Want let her dainty hands be seen on the mole-hill, till the fiddling, dancing, and laughing were finished, and the Piskeys went off to the Piskey-beds to sleep.