"Pass-word?" bellowed back Master Nathaniel, "by the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West, what...."
But before he could finish his sentence, the door was opened from the other side, and they marched into a low, square room, which was lit by one lamp swinging by a chain from the ceiling—for which there seemed but little need, for a light more brilliant than that of any lamp, and yet as soft as moonlight, seemed to issue from the marvelous tapestries that hung on the walls.
They were dumb with amazement. This was as different from all the other tapestry they had ever seen as is an apple-tree in full blossom against a turquoise sky in May to the same tree in November, when only a few red leaves still cling to its branches, and the sky is leaden. Oh, those blues, and pinks, and brilliant greens! In what miraculous dyes had the silks been dipped?
As to the subjects, they were those familiar to every Dorimarite—hunting scenes, fugitives chased by the moon, shepherds and shepherdesses tending their azure sheep. But, depicted in these brilliant hues, they were like the ashes of the past, suddenly, under one's very eyes, breaking into flame. Heigh-presto! The men and women of a vanished age, noisy, gaudy, dominant, are flooding the streets, and driving the living before them like dead leaves.
And what was this lying in heaps on the floor? Pearls and sapphires, and monstrous rubies? Or windfalls of fruit, marvellous fruit, fallen from the trees depicted on the tapestry?
Then, as their eyes grew accustomed to all the brilliance, the two friends began to get their bearings; there could be no doubt as to the nature of that fruit lying on the floor. It was fairy fruit, or their names were not respectively Chanticleer and Honeysuckle.
And, to their amazement, the guardian of this strange treasure was none other than their old acquaintance Mother Tibbs.
Her clear, child-like eyes that shone like lamps out of her seared weather-beaten face, were gazing at them in a sort of mild surprise.
"If it isn't Master Hyacinth and Master Josiah!" she exclaimed, adding, with her gay, young laugh, "to think of their knowing the pass-word!"
Then she peered anxiously into their faces: "Are your stockings wearing well yonder? The last pair I washed for you didn't take the soap as they should. Marching down the Milky Way, and tripping it beyond the moon, is hard on stockings."