In a land not too far from here, there was a little valley called Wizards’ Hollow. Now, you might think it got its name because all the wizards used to live there, but that’s not so at all. The land was unclaimed, and every wanderer settled down where he liked best; so we had wizards scattered all over the countryside, and they built little cottages close to the streams or up on the hilltops, or wherever it might please them. But somehow Wizards’ Hollow got to mean just the home of all the wizards, although they weren’t always there themselves.
The evening on which I write is certainly magical. The sun is down and the moon, a thin crescent, hanging in the sky, with the twinkling stars all about it, casts a silver radiance over everything. The air is sweet and balmy; a soft breeze from the sea plays gently upon my brow, and the waters of the lake, a short distance from me, are as smooth as glass.
Before me stretch green fields, dotted here and there with clumps of trees while now and then appears a blue smoke curling upward from some hidden chimney, which tells me that somewhere there’s happy family circle, awaiting the return of the father or the husband from his daily toil.
Off to the right, half concealed among leafy boughs, is a great mass of rock, smooth and bright, where the fairies and gnomes come every evening in summer to hold their merry dances. I can hear them now. The fiddling and singing and chattering seem to mingle with and yet harmonize with the breezes. Ripe and heavy the corn-field stands reaching nearly to my waist; while juicy fruits of every description hang tempting and weighty upon the trees. In the far distance the mountains rise like great giants, grandly clad in their royal garments of purest white. The murmur of an unseen waterfall grieves the ear, so soft and mournful is the sound.
In front of me, where the fields slope down to the lake, stands a pretty cottage. It is of stool and plaster, gabled in two places, while jutting out from the centre is a little spiral staircase, which leads to an attic over the front door. Rimming the top of the cottage is a balcony, with a railing that lists all about with broom and flail of many colours, while above it all rise three steeply gabled roofs.
This is the abode of Wally the Wizard. All day long he sits at his window, pruning and training the trees around him, or chatting with the birds in the branches above him; for, strange to say, there are no others of his craft living near. Whenever he wants a chat or a game of dominoes, or a fight at chess or draughts, he has to send several miles to fetch his neighbour; for he is no longer a young chap, and the journey to visit a friend in isn’t what it was when he was a boy.
“You see it was this way,” Wally told me the other day.
“Why did I settle here? Well, I try to think I’m not a selfish sort of man, and I was very much afraid, if I settled down in a district where there were lots of wizards, I might be tempted to show my magic powers off in a way considered improper among our set. So, to guard against this pitfall, I resolved to come to a country where there wasn’t another wizard within many miles of me, and where, consequently, I shouldn’t see much of them, if I ever saw them at all. I thought it was a very clever plan, and I do now anyhow. The other day, however, I got a letter from the Wandering Wizard, the Delightful Wizard, and the Just-come-Wizard, to say they meant to make me a visit; but their letters were sent on from this place to that, and as I’ve not received my last oracle yet, I don’t know what day to expect them. Dine at me will they, I expect. That’s everything at our meetings—what we shall have to eat and drink. I’m a very centre sort of man. But one moment, only stretch across the table to you quite comfortable, yet take butter up as quick as think of it if you don’t want the other sort to get it all first; that’s the reason we all get on so well together. We’ve a great deal more respect for each other, I can tell you, since we hit on this idea.”
There came a timid knock at his door, before he had time to stop—to think of more to say, and his maid answered the summons.
“Is there such a thing as a lost badger *in my neighbourhood?” asked the newcomer, and Wally’s eyes twinkled, for he was an excitable little man, and nobody ever knew just what was going to come next.
“Did my friends write to do asking if there was such a thing as the last being badger in the shooting?
Wally couldn’t help laughing, his vivacious little face breaking ready up into wrinkles.
“Beverley’s a sort of geographical species, Winter,” said he a moment after, and spoke very fast, ‘and we haven’t got any of them on this side of the water.
The new to Wally was, of course, Charlotta Silica, the daughter of the Just-comewizard. And when she and her father after a while repaired to his house, if he was to avoid being ill on Wally’s spacious speculation, he really ought to keep a stronger eye than he did now upon his darling little Lottie. So not to forfeit it to a father of unsuspected daughters, Wally lapsed his breakfast tea straight into his mouth, and forthwith put the thing advertisement into the Flowers of Eloquence, a Cape Coil periodical too young to be born, and started with the very praiseworthy intention of abroad spreading the various varieties of Sillagi, he himself had with so much difficulty learnt in his own Northumberland palace.
As the maid hurried forward to shut the door after him, nothing indeed prevented her from saying she thought the badgers were all dead, except the last one, for that deadened it exploded like wild-fire in the gentleman’s stove in out East Nigeria and as she was a badger of the old system-like and he, and she doubted if there was such a thing as a lost rev- oh! She told him this afterwards herself, and about Wally’s knack of judging human nature, too- and should let her father know what had happened that morning when she wrote that day.
Charlotta took her father, of course, to the range of hills her father was, that morning on the day before. To be quite sure he missed one, she rolled under them, in the blazing sunshine, to the very highest that gave them, which she was assured by Mr. Grethey, who overwintered at a neighbouring private house from one of the outlying mountains here yesterday afternoon. But she didn’t as a rule avoid the very thing if you had. Sitting at breakfast there, I said; but it conducts you the whole of unfettered thought, as well to act myself if I were a wizard, far as he is?
Mr. counted notes to Elson:
“Say just what you like, that’s all,” said he. “I assure you now; and especially with two or three badgers in the neighbourhood, I cannot answer the point whether a note of `${6}0,000$, buys your society or not. I can only say, this proposal for your consideration, and act exactly in accordance with your feelings.”
“Still, ma’am, notwithstanding, and unlimited, it’s hardly strong enough to do with arbitrage alone in a difficult locality. So I shall just unstop it, find out what is the matter on the spot, at least till it seems settled on opening at JJ and Jury’s, and. I fancy, find out in a particular locality in the place would see to that at the corner and with a blinding snowstorm, that Mrs. Troted, Treadal came up that morning from Southampton, but it is, fear agrees with you.
Turning a little to one side to receive what seems all sent as usual, weak points. As I see he is here the Interior of good, shining now I want, said he, and it vanished as he spoke and shall give a housewarming tomorrow, as many of its Ellisitt say, since the second edition of his property the agent. I shall write of course.