Half-way up the opposite slope a brush fire was burning clearly and steadily in a maple grove . There was something indescribably alluring in that fire , glowing so redly against the dark background of forest and twilit hill . `` Let us go to it , '' cried Uncle Blair , gaily , casting aside his sorrowful mood and catching our hands . `` A wood fire at night has a fascination not to be resisted by those of mortal race . Hasten -- we must not lose time . '' `` Oh , it will burn a long time yet , '' I gasped , for Uncle Blair was whisking us up the hill at a merciless rate . `` You ca n't be sure . It may have been lighted by some good , honest farmer-man , bent on tidying up his sugar orchard , but it may also , for anything we know , have been kindled by no earthly woodman as a beacon or summons to the tribes of fairyland , and may vanish away if we tarry . '' It did not vanish and presently we found ourselves in the grove . It was very beautiful ; the fire burned with a clear , steady glow and a soft crackle ; the long arcades beneath the trees were illuminated with a rosy radiance , beyond which lurked companies of gray and purple shadows . Everything was very still and dreamy and remote . `` It is impossible that out there , just over the hill , lies a village of men , where tame household lamps are shining , '' said Uncle Blair . `` I feel as if we must be thousands of miles away from everything we 've ever known , '' murmured the Story Girl . `` So you are ! '' said Uncle Blair emphatically . `` You 're back in the youth of the race -- back in the beguilement of the young world . Everything is in this hour -- the beauty of classic myths , the primal charm of the silent and the open , the lure of mystery . Why , it 's a time and place when and where everything might come true -- when the men in green might creep out to join hands and dance around the fire , or dryads steal from their trees to warm their white limbs , grown chilly in October frosts , by the blaze . I would n't be much surprised if we should see something of the kind . Is n't that the flash of an ivory shoulder through yonder gloom ?
And did n't you see a queer little elfin face peering at us XXXXX that twisted gray trunk ?
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