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 tomy 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 
