What more he might have said was cut short by a noise, which, while he was yet speaking, had caught his ear. A noise as of answering voices, mingled with peals of wild and mocking laughter, heard from several directions at once, and ringing out clear and shrill upon the still evening air. These sounds abruptly ceased—the more abruptly from leaving no echoes behind them, where echoes were wont to be left. But straight were they succeeded by another sound, caused, apparently, by a pair of light feet, which, with a hop, step and jump, by way of a start, were now coming in through the leaves and grass with a slow and measured tread; and so near at hand that he who walked would have been in plain view just there. At first Sprigg looked too high to see what was to be seen, but soon lowering his gaze he saw——
But close the book for a minute and guess. Can not? Try it again! Not yet? No—nor could you, were you to try from New Year's morn to New Year's eve. Wonderful, as you may think it, Sprigg saw there on the ground, not a dozen paces from him, his cast-off moccasins, coming slowly toward him—first the right foot, then the left—without so much as a pair of knee buckles to show for legs, till they had set their toes within easy speaking distance, squarely confronting him. The boy stood stock still, staring before him, with no more power to move from the spot than the bushes around him. So great was his astonishment, not to say terror, he felt at the sight of this fantastic apparition.
CHAPTER IX.
Finds the Red Moccasins Whole-souled Friends in Need.
"Are we not beautiful things for the feet, Sprigg? Oh, but we are! You can't deny it! On with us, then, and away to grandpap's house! Who said we couldn't take Sprigg to grandpap's house? Who said we couldn't take Sprigg to young Ben Logan's house? Who said we couldn't take Sprigg to pretty little Bertha's house? If Will-o'-the-Wisp said so, he lied! He lied, too, if he said our Sprigg was not a brave boy! He-he-he!"
The boy knew well enough, for he heard it distinctly enough this time, that the voice did not come from his own heart, nor yet from the moccasins, but from a point in the air, about as high up from the ground as his own mouth, as if he who spoke were standing in the moccasins, face to face with him, though not even so much as a shade of a shadow could he see.
"An elf! An elf is in the moccasins!" cried the boy, and tearing his feet from the ground, where he had stood as rooted, fled for his life, the moccasins following right at his heels and mockingly keeping step for step with him, till down in a swoon he sank at the foot of an old oak tree. How long he lay thus he never knew, but when he recovered his senses, there before him were the red moccasins, side by side, the toe of the left one turned slightly outward, as if he who stood in them were taking it quite at his ease. A self-assured air, well suiting the self-assured voice, which, in tones quite new and strange, pronounced these words, with an emphatic pause at the end of each brief sentence:
"You may run to the green earth's end, my boy! To the sea, where the bright sun soon shall set! To the sea, where the pale moon soon shall rise! But, step for step, come we at your heels, though borne you be on the wings of the wind!"