“How do I know that I am alive?” answered the flax-fairy in a murmur. Fainter grew the voices and the vision faded from the boy’s sight.
He knew not how long it was he stayed there, but after awhile he awoke with a start to find that Eline was no longer with him, and that he had slept among the flax in the sunshine.
IX
“It must have been a dream!” he said. But he did not believe it was a dream—for all his words. And really the flowers seemed to him to bear a new life after that wonderful vision which came to him when Eline gave him for an hour the seeing eye.
Working with the others joyfully and happily without a moment’s pause or one thought of failure, they saw quickly growing an immense heap of beautiful fine white thread. The children had helped the flax to grow and now in turn it aided them to clear more ground.
For in no long time all was finished and before them they had a mighty rope growing greater every day under their Leader’s eye.
One strange thing there was about the rope. For there were golden threads interwoven which the children did not remember having seen among the flax. And they wondered.
But Eline only said “It is golden flax.”
Whatever it was, it shone brightly in the sun until it looked like a ray of real sunlight in the rope.
