Atalapha, a Winged Brownie 
served: just as the smaller folk come earliest in any 
procession, so the lesser Elfins in their scores were 
first to arrive. 
In half an hour the black-faced Brownies came in 
hundreds, and the air over the tranquil Beaver 
ponds was like that of a barnyard whose swallow 
colony is strong. 
The third sunset came and went. The shades of 
night were sweeping up from the east. The robins 
alone were singing in the gloaming, when beautiful 
Borealis in his red and yellow robes skimmed down 
the mountain-side and joined the jolly pirouetting 
host that sang and circled in the upper shades. 
A little later long-winged Serotinus skimmed into 
the crowd, to be the advance courier of the last and 
royalest of them all, that clad in frosted sable furs 
swooped in on ample wings. Biggest, strongest, 
rarest of the folk of Shadowland, the king of his 
kind, the chief of the winged Brownies, and yet we 
sordid blind ones have no better name for him than 
Hoary Bat. 
Darting up and down the waterway, chasing the 
fat moths and big game of the night, noctua, samia, 
lachnosterna, or stripping their bodies of legs and 
wings to devour the soft parts in air, the great Bat 
flew, first of the royal house to come. Sometimes 
skimming low over the waters, sometimes shooting 
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