144 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



hundreds of flat, five-petaled white blossoms. This 

 celebrated pyxie moss is not a moss at all, but a tiny 

 shrub. Near the summit of the mound the path 

 was lost in a foam of the blue, lilac, and white butter- 

 fly blossoms of the lupine. Little clouds of fragrance 

 drifted through the air, as the wind swayed rows and 

 rows of the transparent bells of the leucothoe. 

 Beyond the lupine stood a rank of dazzling white 

 turkey-beards, the xerophyllum of the botanists. 

 The inmost circle of the mound was carpeted with 

 dry gray reindeer moss, and before me, in the centre 

 of the circle, drooped on slender stems seven rose-red 

 moccasin flowers. 



They have sought him high, they have sought him low, 

 They have sought him over down and lea; 



They have found him by the milk-white thorn 

 That guards the gates o' Faerie. 



'T was bent beneath and blue above, 



Their eyes were held that they might not see 



The kine that grazed beneath the knowes; 

 Oh, they were the Queens o' Faerie. 



If only that day my eyes had been loosed like those of 

 True Thomas, I too might have seen the fairy queens 

 in all their regal beauty. 



Wherever it be found, the moccasin flower will 

 always hold me by its sheer beauty. Yet to my mem- 

 ory none of them can approach the loveliness of that 

 cloistered colony which I first found in the pine wood 

 so many years ago. Year after year I would visit 



