Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/125



Y her soft hands, by her soft words the Nixie held Valentine, and by the heavy, honeyed drink that she gave him. And she took his sword and she hid it under the deep green moss of the chamber where he stayed. When the sword had been hidden, there was nothing to waken Valentine out of the shadow and the slumber that was in that chamber, and there was nothing to remind him of the quest he had started upon—the winning of the way through the Dark Forest, and afterward the helping of the children out of the Wood of Daylight-Gone and back into the world.