“ ‘Hillo it is, you old mocking curmudgeon, say that again and I’ll pound your face into a jelly,’ said the major, turning wrathfully around; but, though he looked every where, not a bit of a man could he see even as big as the fabled Tom Thumb. It was, as I have said, a wide, open common, with not a tree or a house upon it, and if any living thing had been moving across its surface he would have been sure to have detected it. What could it have been? He thought of all the stories of goblins he had ever read, and his hair almost stood on end as he remembered them. But rallying himself, he began to whistle aloud, and stare again at the saucy star overhead. The sky, however, had grown darker during the interruption; and in a few moments the clouds obscured the provoking star. For a moment he closed his eyes, and feeling sleepy, dozed; but his head suddenly pitching forward, aroused him, and he once more looked up. What a sight was there! Dark, frowning masses of vapor swept wildly across the firmament; while the wind now wailed out in unearthly tones, and then went shrieking across the common like the laughter of a troop of malignant fiends. A wood, some distance off, skirting the common, tossed its gray, leafless branches wantonly in the winds; and anon a loud, shrill whistle, as of an army of hunters, rung out, down in the very heart of the forest. The major almost started from his feet, and rubbed his eyes to rouse himself from his drowsiness. The clouds were once more drifting swiftly across the sky, now rolling together into huge, dark masses, and now separating, and then weaving together again into a thousand fantastic shapes. Just at that instant the provoking star gleamed once more through the drift, and this time it stared at him more like his spouse than ever. The major could stand it no longer. Forgetting the fearful things around him, he shook his clenched fist at it, and said,
“ ‘Hillo! you old, wry-faced vixen, how dare you squint at me—Ma—a—a—jor—Com—Compt—Compton—how dare you, I say? Do you want to remind me that I was once fool enough to get married?—I’d like to see the woman I’d have now: all the powers above or below couldn’t force me to get married again—no, no, you old crab-apple!—I—I—say—’
“They couldn’t—couldn’t they?” quietly said a voice at his elbow.
“And who the deuce are you?” said the major, turning sharply around.
“ ‘Who do you think?’ said one of the oddest looking beings the major ever beheld—a short, mis-shapen man, with great goggle eyes, a roguish leer on his face, legs that were doubled up under him like a pocket-rule, and long, bony fingers, one of which was stuck knowingly aside his nose, while his eyes alternately were winking at the astonished major; for the little fellow seemed to be in high glee at the wonder he occasioned.
“For some minutes they stood looking at each other without a word—the major’s eyes growing larger and larger with astonishment; while the odd little fellow kept winking away, with his finger at his nose, to his own apparent glee. At length he said,
“ ‘Well—what d’ y’e think, old carbuncle?’
“Now the major was a valiant man, and had any mortal thing called him by such a nick name, he would have first run him through and then almost eaten him alive; but he has told me a hundred times that his heart went like a forge-hammer to be addressed by a being of another world. So he only stammered,
“ ‘I—I—don’t know—’
“ ‘Speak up, man, speak up—why your voice is as thin and weak as if you’d been doctored for the quinzy a month.’