Indeed, for a year or more, I knew not there was such a spot, and might,perhaps, have never known, had it not been for a wizard afternoon inautumn--late in autumn--a mad poet's afternoon; when the turned maplewoods in the broad basin below me, having lost their first vermiliontint, dully smoked, like smouldering towns, when flames expire upontheir prey; and rumor had it, that this smokiness in the general air wasnot all Indian summer--which was not used to be so sick a thing, howevermild--but, in great part, was blown from far-off forests, for weeks onfire, in Vermont; so that no wonder the sky was ominous as Hecate'scauldron--and two sportsmen, crossing a red stubble buck-wheat field,seemed guilty Macbeth and foreboding Banquo; and the hermit-sun, huttedin an Adullum cave, well towards the south, according to his season, didlittle else but, by indirect reflection of narrow rays shot down aSimplon pass among the clouds, just steadily paint one small, round,strawberry mole upon the wan cheek of northwestern hills. Signal as acandle. One spot of radiance, where all else was shade.

Fairies there, thought I; some haunted ring where fairies dance.

Time passed; and the following May, after a gentle shower upon themountains--a little shower islanded in misty seas of sunshine; such adistant shower--and sometimes two, and three, and four of them, allvisible together in different parts--as I love to watch from thepiazza, instead of thunder storms, as I used to, which wrap oldGreylock, like a Sinai, till one thinks swart Moses must be climbingamong scathed hemlocks there; after, I say, that, gentle shower, I saw arainbow, resting its further end just where, in autumn, I had marked themole. Fairies there, thought I; remembering that rainbows bring out theblooms, and that, if one can but get to the rainbow's end, his fortuneis made in a bag of gold. Yon rainbow's end, would I were there, thoughtI. And none the less I wished it, for now first noticing what seemedsome sort of glen, or grotto, in the mountain side; at least, whateverit was, viewed through the rainbow's medium, it glowed like the Potosimine. But a work-a-day neighbor said, no doubt it was but some oldbarn--an abandoned one, its broadside beaten in, the acclivity itsbackground. But I, though I had never been there, I knew better.

A few days after, a cheery sunrise kindled a golden sparkle in the samespot as before. The sparkle was of that vividness, it seemed as if itcould only come from glass. The building, then--if building, after all,it was--could, at least, not be a barn, much less an abandoned one;stale hay ten years musting in it. No; if aught built by mortal, it mustbe a cottage; perhaps long vacant and dismantled, but this very springmagically fitted up and glazed.