V
Did you ever wander through the woods on a beautiful autumn day, when the sun was shining, calm and bright, upon the richly tinted foliage; when the boughs creaked, and the dry leaves rustled about your feet?
The woods seem so weary. They can only meditate, and live in old remembrances. A blue haze, like a dream, surrounds them with a mysterious beauty, and glistening gossamer floats through the air in idle undulations—like futile, aimless meditations.
Yet, suddenly and unaccountably, out of the damp ground, between moss and dry leaves, rise up the marvelous toadstools; some thick, deformed, and fleshy; others tall and slender with ringed stems and bright-colored hoods. Strange dream-figures of the woods are they!
There may be seen also, on moldering tree-trunks, countless, small white growths with little black tops, as if they had been burnt. Some wise folk consider them a kind of fungus. But Johannes learned better.
"They are little candles. They burn in still autumn nights, and the goblin mannikins sit beside them, and read in little books."
Windekind taught him that, on such a still autumn day, while Johannes dreamily inhaled the faint odor of the forest soil.
"What makes the leaves of the sycamore so spotted with black?"
"Oh, the goblins do that, too," said Windekind. "When they have been writing nights, they throw out in the morning, over the leaves, what is left in their ink bottles. They do not like this tree. Crosses, and poles for contribution bags, are made out of sycamore wood."