THE EARTH-DWELLERS OF NO MAN'S LAND Then presently we came to a strange place, the like of which I have never seen, save here on the borders of the Mark and the northern Wendish lands.

An amalgam of lime, or binding stuff of some sort, had glued the clay of the ravines together, and set it stiff and fast like dried plaster.

So, as we went up the narrow, perilous path, our horses had to tread very warily lest, going too near the edge, they should chip off enough of the foothold to send themselves and their riders whirling neck-over-toes to the bottom.
All at once the Little Playmate, who was riding immediately before me, screamed out sharp and shrill, and I hastened up to her, thinking she had fallen upon a misfortune.

I found her palfrey with ears pricked and distended nostril, gazing at a head in a red nightcap which was set out of a hole in the red clay.
"The country of gnomes! Of a surety, yes! And hitherto I had thought it had been but the nonsense of folk-tales!" said I to myself.
Which is what we shall say one day of more things than red-nightcapped heads.
But the Little Playmate uttered scream after scream, for the head continued coolly to stare at her, as if fixed alive over the gateway by the craft of some cave-dwelling imp of the Red Axe.
I noticed, however, that the head chewed a straw and spat, which I deemed a gnome would not do--though wherefore straws and spitting are not free to gnomes I do not know and could not have told.

Yet, at all events, such was my belief.