The water-steeds, hearing his answer, and snorting with rage, struck the shore with their pounding hoofs.
“Back to your waves!” cried the little harper; and as he ran his fingers across his lyre, the frightened steeds drew back into the waters.
“What is the price?” asked the Dwarf.
“Your right eye,” said the Fairy; and before the Dwarf could say a word, the Fairy scooped out the eye with his finger, and put it into his pocket.
The Dwarf suffered most terrible agony; but he resolved to bear it for the sake of the little Princess. Then the Fairy sat down on a rock at the edge of the sea, and, after striking a few notes, he began to play the “Strains of Slumber.”
The sound crept along the waters, and the steeds, so ferocious a moment before, became perfectly still. They had no longer any motion of their own, and they floated on the top of the tide like foam before a breeze.
“Now,” said the Fairy, as he led the Dwarf’s horse to the edge of the tide.
The Dwarf urged the horse into the water, and once out of his depth, the old horse struck out boldly for the island. The sleeping water-steeds drifted helplessly against him, and in a short time he reached the island safely, and he neighed joyously as his hoofs touched solid ground.
The Dwarf rode on and on, until he came to a bridle-path, and following this, it led him up through winding lanes, bordered with golden furze that filled the air with fragrance, and brought him to the summit of the green hills that girdled and looked down on the Mystic Lake. Here the horse stopped of his own accord, and the Dwarf’s heart beat quickly as his eye rested on the lake, that, clipped round by the ring of hills, seemed in the breezeless and sunlit air—
“As still as death.
And as bright as life can be.”